


To Want And To Need

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Demon Dean Winchester, Developing Relationship, Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe in Miracles?, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mark of Cain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Vessels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:49:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 71,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I have no idea what's happening between us, but I like it and I'd like to keep it."</i>
</p><p> </p><p><b>Universe alteration:</b> Dean doesn't disappear from the dungeon in 9x23.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Playing Team

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Hinky_Panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Hinky_Panda/gifts).



> This will probably be a slower update until finishing, which is happening, I hope, very soon. By "slower" I mean this won't come from start to conclusion in a single week as I'd prefer, but, hell. I felt like Hinky needed some cheering and as such I might as well not cling onto the first half of this story which, unlike the second half, in fact is finished.
> 
> I'm sorry that Dean's a dick. I'm really, really sorry for that. I didn't get much chance to undick him because of the whole Mark of Cain thing. He's not nice. Forgive him, he has issues and they're out of control with the whole demon thing going on.

* * *

 

The sky was dark despite the stars that God had scattered into the emptiness of space around this world. Shreds of clouds gathered at the sphere's very center and much like life they seemed to have no silver lining tonight: the dark of them was a haunting dull grey, and no detail could be seen in them.  
Gadreel had never felt this lost in his life, at least not since the moment he'd realised that Eden was no more, and that it was his fault. The years of torture and rejection had not steered him off course; they'd given him a sense of destination instead, as desperate as the quest had always seemed. Now, however, without the binds of his shackles and the walls of his cell in this vastness of opportunity, he found himself without a guiding light. Turn after turn his footing failed him, and as such, the road upon which he now stood seemed comfortingly firm and the earthy scent of grass and flowers in bloom all around him soothed his uneasy mind.

A part of him felt at home here at the doors of the bunker base the Men of Letters had built in their time. Another remained more lost than ever: the part of him that had been driven out from here, the part of him that had betrayed, murdered and begged for forgiveness only to receive a deadly blow in return for it. He'd walked a long way to end up here again, and the mist was still closing in. In a blink of an eye his life had changed so much, like he existed inside a kaleidoscope that was constantly shaken anew, that he felt as if drowning, unsure which way the bubbles were headed. Stopping wasn't an option; the current flowed fast and he was trapped within its course.  
The past weeks had torn his hope from him. Up until then, hope had been the very core of him: the only light the centuries past had not managed to dim. It wasn't the usual kind of hope, and for that reason alone it had survived. It was a building block of him, and the loss of it now had left him with nothing but the confusion of the situation he'd landed in. He shifted, turned and started walking again; he'd walked back and forth around the premises for a good while now. It easened the restlessness within him but brought to front the bone-deep exhaustion: he was injured, and not only once but four times to date with wounds and bruises and broken pieces that had failed to heal in the time given to them. Every cell in the body tried its best to tell him it needed rest, that _he_ needed rest - a safe place to lie down in was all it asked, and he couldn't provide it with an alternative as long as his own core remained as battered as the flesh was. It didn't matter, he'd realised a while ago. This was about time that he died, whichever way it would come to him. It wasn't luck that had carried him this far but necessity, and right here he felt the end of the road coming up ahead, very close by but not quite yet over.  
It was in his weariness, in the black of his mind and in the shivering of the bare-bones wings that he dragged behind him, in his vessel that was healed but still echoed the deeper wounds of the grace it concealed, and more than anything it was in the knowledge of having lost the one thing that had kept him on the road this long. There would be no redemption at the end of this path he'd been pushed onto, but the least he could do was die so that it still counted. He'd chosen these people and one angel to lead him to that point: their judgement seemed more sound than his own, so he relied upon its rightfulness, and at the end of the day even if it wasn't enough it still had to be vastly better than Metatron's tyranny. This family had never asked him to slay an innocent, nor had it told him to turn his blade into his own kin to make the weakest and the foulest to follow the orders that commanded the deaths of their siblings standing alongside them. This family still fought for humanity where Metatron had forsaken it, and in Castiel still remained hope for the angels as well. Hope, and love for his family, both the one he'd been created to and the one he'd chosen for himself. It seemed a much healthier and just direction to head for. Yet, even after being allowed to follow them close by, Gadreel knew he was anything but accepted and forgiven. He was a necessary risk; an outsider who could still prove useful, and was at least too dangerous to let out alive. Castiel had saved his life and Sam Winchester had stood by his side as he'd done it; for what reason, Gadreel still couldn't tell. They'd brought him back here and the plans had been laid out, and now the only thing that still had to be resolved remained the older Winchester, stuck in his cell unwilling to reason with any of them, lusting for blood like a rabid dog and howling in pain like a dying one. It was that which Gadreel had escaped, the heaviness in the air that dwelled within the bunker's walls now, keeping his mind from even attempting to find peace amongst the thoughts he already battled on his own. Neither Castiel nor Sam had thought it wise to bring him near the Marked One, and Gadreel hadn't insisted - he had no reason to go to Dean, even less after the man had turned on him for a second time. There was no love between them, but it wasn't that purpose for which they could not fight together yet. The reason was in the poison of the brand. A soldier would fight alongside his worst enemy if the cause calling was bigger than what separated them, but a soldier driven into madness by a curse laid into his very soul was no man to trust, and no weapon to bring into battle. They'd figure out what made him tick and put a leash around that weakness, and if they could talk sense into him while at it, the better. But the last thing they now needed was Gadreel bringing out the worst in Dean, and Gadreel knew it well. He couldn't have been more thankful for the excuse.

A mass of clouds approached from northwest; it would likely rain soon.

 

* * *

 

Sam tasted rot in the coffee he was drinking. His hands trembled when he lifted the cup to smell at its edges, only to find it as clean as it looked, and the pot wasn't at fault either - the reason had to be inside his head and not outside it, a fact that didn't necessarily surprise him as much as it caused him to feel even sicker to his stomach.  
Castiel had stood motionless by the hall's wall for the past five minutes, eyes darkened by the frown he wore on him like a crown, and sometimes he shifted or grunted to his thoughts and discomfort, the humanity in him reminding Sam that he'd indeed lived for months as much a stranger to himself as Sam now felt Dean had become.

"Where is Gadreel?" the angel suddenly asked, turning the piercing blue of his eyes to Sam.

Sam felt his brows lifting; he'd forgotten about Gadreel. No wonder: his mind, it seemed, had been all but empty since they'd climbed up from what was about to become his brother's tomb.  
"Oh, God," he muttered, placing the cup back on the table.  
"Not again."

Castiel sighed. He raised a hand to rub at his forehead like he was suffering a headache. Perhaps he was - perhaps that was something his fading grace now allowed room for. Sam tried to push that thought away like he'd pushed the rest of them; the last thing he needed was one more worry he couldn't do a single thing to help.  
Gadreel, on the other hand, was a problem that he could at least attempt to solve.

"I'll look outdoors," he grunted, pushing up from his chair, "I don't want to be the one to find him snooping in the research. I can't take a single more disappointment for the day. Can you fight? Just - just in case he's nose deep in our notes of Metatron and the rest."

"I can fight."  
There was a sense of discomfort underlying the statement, a hesitation.  
"I don't know if I can fight him."

"Huh?"

"He's strong, Sam. I haven't tried. That's one of the reasons. There are - other reasons - his usefulness, for one, we truly need him. I'm just saying that he was chosen for his duty at creation for a reason, and that he single-handedly killed tens of angels in crowded, small rooms as recently as a month ago. What I'm saying is that we're safest together."

"I hear you."  
Sam sighed. Yeah, he hadn't thought of that when he'd embraced the loss of an enemy at the dawn of the big battle to come. If Gadreel's word wasn't as trustworthy as they against all hard evidence counted it to be, he was a razor they'd willingly brought to the artery and all it now needed to do was to cut quick enough.  
"Indoors first, then."

Before heading into the rooms they made sure Sam had a blade at hand: he concealed it under his flannel but kept it ready in case he'd have to act quick. It seemed ridiculous that they had to hunt an ally with weapons in the very heart of their defenses, but Gadreel was a risk they could barely afford to take; a last straw that had fallen into their hands from the blue and which they hoped rather than believed they could trust. It had the first evening's test breathing down their necks as well - if Gadreel was going to betray them, he'd probably rather do it sooner than allow them move in deeper. But even with all these doubts lingering in Sam's mind, he had the old gut feeling they would only find empty halls wherever they'd head - that, even against all what would be expected of him, Gadreel would not betray them now.  
Perhaps later, or perhaps so sneakily they wouldn't know until the time would come, just as had happened the previous time around, but somehow that seemed unlikely.

"Do _you_ think we can trust him?" Sam heard himself asking as he closed the last door he could think to look from.

Castiel hesitated. Both their visions turned towards the way out and a silence lingered upon them; in it, the quiet song of the empty hallways, an ominous low humming, accompanied the angel's thoughts.  
"I want to believe," Castiel finally replied as if Sam had asked him about aliens, "but we have to consider who he is. Betrayal is in his nature. It's been there from the very beginning."

Some obscure part of Sam revolted at the notion of inborn evil, but he silenced it. He remembered all too well the smell of burnt flesh and the empty sockets that the bright light revealed as Kevin's body fell from his hands to the cold stone floors; he remembered too well, as almost every night he woke up to it once, if not twice, and relief seemed far from him even today.  
Truth was that some people just couldn't be trusted, and it wasn't a question of fate - it was a simple law of life.

"He may have walked already," the angel noted pointedly as Sam had spaced out.  
The younger jumped at the notion and nodded, ashamed of the delay; he was tired, but they did have a situation at hand.

"'Walked' being the exact word to use here, unless he took your car," he did say as they moved swiftly along the corridor back towards the study.

Castiel grimaced, hand moving into the trench coat's deep pocket. He raised it, clinging the keys in his hand.  
"Not mine."

Sam chuckled.  
"Good to know one of us is up to date with security."

 

* * *

 

The sound of the bunker's heavy doors bore a strict resemblance to the sound of the section door in Heaven's prison. Gadreel, despite knowing well from what door the metallic clang originated, couldn't help the flood of adrenaline that crashed into his veins and got the vessel's heart beating hard and fast. He'd frozen solid from the shock, but when logic caught up with him, he slowly felt the muscles relax and turned to watch how two shapes emerged from the bunker into the yellow light that illuminated the immediate area surrounding it. One of them was Castiel: even weakened as it was, his aura was unmistakable, much more a familiar face to Gadreel than the flesh he wore to walk the earth. The other was Sam Winchester, and his soul's radiance could match the dimmed glow of Castiel's breaking grace - it was a wildfire of a spirit, a strong and bright light that announced to all that this man was someone of note.  
They stopped at the end of the slope and Castiel's grace flashed in Gadreel's direction, then quickly reached back to its own space. He exchanged some inaudible words with Sam, whose hand passed upon his shoulder, and then turned to walk back to the bunker. For one reason or the other, they'd judged him harmless, and now Sam was already walking towards him. As the man left the lit area, Gadreel caught a glimpse of the angelic blade hidden underneath his shirt - the bright metal reflected just enough of the last rays of light to make itself known and then promptly disappeared under the flap of the shirt's front again. The sentry turned, anxious and uncertain, to meet the hunter half-way there.

"You need to stop disappearing," Sam grunted in greeting.

"I apologise. I needed to see the stars."

Sam raised a brow at him and cast a doubtful look at the overcast sky. Gadreel couldn't help the weary smile that crossed his features.  
"There were stars earlier," he assured the man, "You can still see the edge of the front in the east."

He watched the younger look into that direction and map out the noted rim. Something about him relaxed at the sight; the story, as implausible as it seemed, most likely didn't ring as strongly a lie to him with some evidence given that it wasn't, at the very least, completely impossible.  
Then, suddenly, tension grew back in the taller and he tasted words in his mouth without speaking them, his body moving restlessly to the side instead and the back again.  
"You know," Sam finally spoke, sharply like the words had jumped across a barrier building over the parting of his lips at the last moment, "I'm gonna give Cas a shout and if you don't mind, take a short walk with you."

Gadreel tilted his head, unsure what to make of it.

"A few things I want to ask," Sam clarified, eyes keen upon the older's features.

"It will rain soon," Gadreel noted.

"Yeah."  
Sam didn't seem concerned. No, instead he seemed tired, simply uncaring.  
"We'll be quick."

"If that is what you want."  
He wanted to argue: that the human would come down with an illness for it, that he'd be weakened when it mattered if he'd carry on ignoring his exhaustion, but if he'd learned two things about Sam those were that he did not need to be patronised and that even in the case he did, it wasn't Gadreel's place to advice him. Quite the contrary: he'd do his best to interfere with the other's choices as little as he could unless they directly endangered him. He'd done enough damage with his best intentions and, despite the well-built facade of neutralcy Sam had towards Gadreel, the angel knew well it concealed a hurt so deep it would not heal over so effortlessly. No, it had to burn as bad as it had when it had been fresh, and time would by now have only toned that burn with the throbbing ache that marked the crossroads between an infection and the beginning of healing.

He accompanied Sam to the bunker's door and to the top of the metal stairway, listening to the quiet conversation between Sam and the seraph downstairs. Soon enough the hunter re-emerged with a flashlight: the darkness outdoors was near impenetrable, so the addition didn't come as a surprise.  
"Come."  
And Gadreel followed again, just a step behind the younger as he'd often followed Metatron, but this time simply to stay in sight. He knew well that staying behind would be read as evidence against his reliability, and walking ahead as disregard for his company or overt pride and lack of appropriate regret, which he felt. Light rain was already falling when they entered the grand darkness outside, and before they exited the circle of yellow glow, nothing could be seen beyond.

Even after they'd moved away from the light, nothing was spoken. The field on their side whispered in the drizzle and wind, and the asphalt underneath their feet was cracking and crumbling to the ditches although its surface was still, for the main part, intact. Sam's breathing was almost restful - the only signs of it that carried up to Gadreel, disregarding the signs of life he could at any moment read by just taking a look at the other, were quiet huffs as they continued on on the hike towards an unknown destination.  
The silence lasted for minutes: the bunker was a distant spark of light in the distance through a dreamlike mist by the time Sam finally spoke.

"How long?" he asked.  
"How long did you work for Metatron?"

Gadreel glanced at him, more surprised by the fact that he'd said something than by the question both brothers had previously attempted to dig out of him by violence.  
Then he turned his eyes back towards the black horizon ahead and judged the time about right to be honest. He had nothing to lose anymore.  
"I met him outside the bar when you and Dean were working a case involving the angel factions late last year; Castiel was there as well, but I do not know how much you remember of it. I wasn't working for him then, nor did I work for him after that meeting. He knew my name and my weaknesses, and when Dean heard of Ezekiel's death and I was left exposed, I was pushed to break my allegiance to you and join into an alliance with Metatron instead. In short, I escaped, and he'd already established himself as the haven he likely knew I would return to."

Sam waited, then let out a small, disappointed chuckle.  
"So you're not even going to make a note about it?"

"There is nothing I can say in my defense. What I did to Kevin Tran is beyond any apology I can make, and attempting such would only add insult to the damage I did."

"At least you knew what I was talking about."  
The rain was picking up in the pause that followed Sam's words.  
"But yeah, you're right. There's nothing you can say and I don't know what I'm expecting, either. I just want to know that you're going through hell for it."

"I assure you I am not without guilt."  
It was a major underestimation, but when he thought about it, Gadreel realised he didn't want Sam to forgive him or even consider forgiving him. He didn't deserve forgiveness. The more they would hate him for what he'd done the more he would pay, and as no payment would ever come near evening out the debt he'd left for himself, the more and the longer it would go on, the more just the punishment was.

"You panicked."

"I -"  
The sentence died upon Gadreel's tongue. He cast another glance in Sam's direction and forgot the order of his feet, causing the tip of his shoe to kick into the asphalt and himself to straighten out to full height to restore balance: it looked exactly like he'd jumped at something, and Sam watched him curiously in the light cast in front of them from the flashlight he carried still.  
As silence returned, Gadreel found himself nodding dully and then turning away.

"You swear that what you're telling me is the truth?"

"I swear," the sentry replied with heaviness in his tone, "I have no reason to lie."

"Should hope so."  
Sam hesitated, cleared his throat and shivered; the rain washed over them in a heavy curtain now, and perhaps that was what made the younger stop and turn. He didn't, however, continue to walk back towards the bunker but instead stood still, shivering more, in the pouring rain and watched Gadreel with a burning clarity in his eyes.  
"You swear that what you came to offer us is genuine, too?" he asked then.

Gadreel nodded, eyes locked with the hunter's.  
"I see Metatron for what he is now. I cannot follow an angel who has abandoned his cause. Rather, I would stay with people I know still believe in serving those who are too weak to take the fight in their own hands, who wish to protect rather than to destroy what has been created perfect, and who do not seek to reshape it selfishly and ignorantly to their own liking."  
Water flowed down his forehead and he took the first step towards the bunker, implying; Sam nodded and fell into following him now instead. As if a spell had been cast over them at this, the rain quieted down, but in the distance a rumbling roar of thunder could be heard.  
"I believe in you," Gadreel continued, "in your brother, and in mine. I believe that your hearts are set on the right course. Even if it seems a losing battle, I'd rather stand with you and fall with you than be granted any position in the world that Metatron wishes to bring forth. I do not know what else to tell you. I regret I ever took his offer - everything I did under his command when I always had the choice to walk away - but I did not see past his lies, and I was desperate and blinded by my pride and selfish desires. When I realised what he wanted to use me for, I'd already sworn myself to his service, and... I was much beyond repentence. Beyond any hope of forgiveness. So I chose to overstay."

"What made you drop out?"

Gadreel huffed.  
"The moment he spoke as Lucifer had, revealing his true feelings of mankind and the highest order ever assigned to all angels. I made that mistake once. Even I would not make it twice. In comparison, perhaps this time I was early and not yet too late in realising that the brother I'd placed my trust in was not worth it nor honest of his true intentions. I cannot grant back the lives I took under his command but at least I can refuse take a single more."

"Fair enough."  
Sam turned off the flashlight: the bunker's light was still much too far for them to benefit from it, but further, a lightning lit up the horizon and for that one moment, the world was white like frost had swallowed it whole.  
"You said you believe in us. All of us. Including Dean."

The roar of thunder was much closer this time.  
"Including your brother," Gadreel repeated, "I have no trust in him and you must forgive me for that, but I know that the man we must work with today is not the one who I first swore loyalty to. After Metatron is dealt with, I believe it is your priority to help Dean."

Sam nodded slowly.  
"I'll figure something out," he said, "Anyway, I just wanted to hear you say it. Because it's crucial - to have a team that won't turn on each other. Now if I just could hear Dean say that of you and trust him on it."

"We must have faith. His humanity can still overcome the Mark's hold."

"And you say that so certainly because...?"

"Because I have faith. It's the only thing I do have and I'd rather hold onto it, Sam Winchester. I know you believe in your brother's strength as well, even when it seems hopeless. Dean is a good man. I've seen him as you see him and I've heard of what he's done - he has a pure heart, even if tainted blood now courses through it."

"Seems to run in the family."

Gadreel looked at him, for the first time feeling a genuine, small smile on his features since the time he'd walked down the steps to the bunker for the first time after leaving it at the end of the previous year.  
"I've yet to see a Winchester who did not have a pure heart," he noted, knowing full well that it wasn't the thing Sam had meant, "so I have no choice but to agree with you."  
To his surprise, Sam let out a tired but just as genuine chuckle as his own smile still remained.


	2. At Last Lines

* * *

 

 

The bathroom floor swayed under Sam's feet. The bunker's showers were too large and too empty for him: for his state of exhaustion and conflict, Sam would have preferred one of the thousand motels scattered around the states, any poorly cleaned little hole that would have made his worries seem more casual and taken away the personal edge of them. Sickness seemed to lurk by the root of his tongue no matter how many times he swallowed back a gag, and the pressure in his body told him exactly how much he wanted to break down in tears but nothing ever came out. Tears wouldn't help him; tears wouldn't take away the Mark from his brother's arm nor would they erase the angels he couldn't deal with and didn't know how to even begin to try. Tears, at best, might help him sleep, but any sleep he stood a chance at having would be cut short by the growing anxiety inside him and the worries that would not lift even in his dreams. He felt stretched and hollow and empty like he'd carried the One Ring for much too long, and sometimes he felt like he had indeed done just that: he'd remained invisible to fight the whole wide world only to have that battle eat him from the inside. This was exactly what he'd tried to escape from years ago, the ridiculous, epic circus of supernatural, but this was his life and it would always remain his life to the day he would die. Some part of him hoped that day would come sooner rather than later, perhaps a leftover from the choice he'd made but been denied by the visitor in the bunker in collaboration with his sick brother, but more likely than not it was just the way his soul had become. He'd seen too much and given more than he'd ever had for himself, and he was dead tired of it. More than anything he just wanted to cut the tired out and leave the dead in, end the last sentence with a full stop and enjoy the silence, the empty page that would follow.  
Of course, he was much too busy to die, and once more it seemed that the whole of the world was lifted onto his shoulders. The weight was crushing him slowly but certainly.

The cold the rain had left him with broke apart sluggishly to make room for warmth and relaxation, but Sam didn't regret taking the walk. It had given him the answers that had added a whole lot of depth to the seemingly endless pit of worries inside him, and now at least that many concerns were erased from him, but on the other hand, it had left him with something new; an itch like a collapse waiting to happen, a whole cavity of trouble he didn't need to accompany the vastness that already stretched within him. He was a mess of these collapses. When he thought he'd finally filled in one hole and buried the cause of it six feet under, another earthquake shook his landscape and three more holes appeared all around him that he had to start filling immediately or risk falling into the gaping chasm that they'd eventually merge into if he gave up. He'd been fine before he'd laughed. It had crossed some line that he'd made damn sure he wouldn't cross, and that line was made of safe levels of trust and ease and forgiveness and friendliness. Momentarily he'd been on the other side of that line and it had felt too good to just smile with a friend, and then, in just a second, he'd woken to the reality that this was no friend of his, that this was the very being that had violated him, used him and murdered the boy that he'd considered his responsibility, _family_ to him. This made him the traitor: so easily he'd spat on Kevin's grave and his own dignity, in exchange for a few friendly words. Was he truly that starved for kindness that he'd take it from anyone?  
That was the core of his nausea now as he squished his hair with the soft white towel that smelled vaguely of the detergent he'd chosen to use for all the laundry in the household. It wasn't the fate of the world that hung so heavy on him, it was the shame that burned him at the seemingly small but infinitely important slip he'd allowed past his guard.  
Such seemed to be the human nature: the tragedies of the smallest scale always somehow beat the universal state of disorder and despair.

Wearing just a pair of grey sweatpants and the towel still wrapped around his head, Sam slid out the door and walked barefooted down all the way to the cell they'd locked Dean in. He was greeted by the unmistakable stench of vomit that, oddly enough, wiped his own sickness from his mind right along with the unnecessary concentration of personal shortcomings, and he leaned to the hidden door to listen for signs of life from inside.

"Sam, I know you're there. I hear you breathing. Let me out. I'm sober, I swear I'm - let me out or I'll bite through my own wrist. I'm not kidding, Sam!"

With a sigh, the younger pushed himself off the door and walked across the room towards the way out. Right by the frames he turned back to look at the covered entrance to Dean's locker and he felt an ache so profound inside him that it seemed to cut open all his veins at once and fill him with free-flowing blood where it didn't belong.

"I just came to say good night," he threw towards the darkness, "and that I'm sorry, Dean."

"Sam!"  
The older kicked the door and the metal rang loudly across the room.  
"Goddamnit, Sam!"  
Silence.

Just as Sam was leaving the room, his fingers already bent around the door's edge to pull it closed after him, Dean spoke again - this time without yelling, in a voice that Sam could recognise.  
"Sammy? Sammy - you still there? Sammy I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Come back. If you're there, come back. Jesus Christ. Sam?"

Sam stepped back inside and closed the door, leaving himself briefly in darkness before his fingertips brushed over the switch and lit the room.  
"I'm here, Dean."  
He walked back to the hidden door and placed his hands over it, knowing somehow that on the other side of it, Dean was doing the exact same thing.

"Listen," Dean grunted, "Listen, I was thinking."

"Okay?"

"So - so Metatron's powered by the tablet, right? That's what makes him God. If we get to that tablet, we can unmake his promotion, and - uh -"

"I'm not giving you the goddamn Blade, Dean."

"Yeah, yeah, _yeah_ , I heard you the first fucking fifty times, Sam. Could you even think about it? I'm dying. I don't care that you don't want to hear it but I've hurled a gallon of blood in here, and it's just getting worse. Makes a man reflect on things, Sammy, and I know I'd rather die out there, fighting the goddamn fight, than inside here doing squat and whining like a baby about it."

"Then stop whining."

"Ha fucking ha. I'm serious."

"So am I."

"Good."

In the silence, they both rubbed the wall with their fingertips, heads bowed and noses stuffy with something neither could breathe through.

"I'll talk to Cas," Sam said after a while, "after I've slept. You should sleep too, Dean, seriously."

"Yeah, okay, let me just throw up my entire gut and I'll sleep. No guarantee I'll stop sleeping, though, so be careful what you wish for."

Sam sighed.  
"Okay," he muttered, too tired to argue, "Whatever, Dean. But I need to sleep and there won't be a fight before I have."

"Okay."  
Dean shifted. His hands dropped from the metal of the door and Sam could hear it - the younger lifted his own hands as well, but his posture remained bent and defeated.  
"Well, let me know when you feel refreshed and you've put your pretty little foreheads together with Cas to decide where I get to die and how."

"Sounds about right," Sam growled and turned to leave, "Good night, Dean."

"Good night, Sammy."  
The last line didn't sound as angry or disappointed as the ones before it. It sounded almost genuine, and somehow that made Sam feel a thousand times worse than leaving behind someone that could well not have been his brother at all.

 

* * *

 

"I'll be heading to bed," Sam announced from the doorway, a white towel hanging from his head and over his bare shoulder like a misguided fashion statement even though the rest of him seemed to have dried ages ago, "Cas, wake me up in five."

"Are you sure that will be enough?" Castiel replied, brows creasing, but Sam simply nodded.

"It's a miracle if I sleep at all," the younger simply said, cast a lingering look at Gadreel whose hands were still by the backs of some books in the section for local mythology, and then seemed to shrug to himself before turning and disappearing again.

Castiel returned to searching through the books that they had together a couple hours earlier gathered on the table: there was a chance that one of them, or the files piled next to them, would at least mention the Mark of Cain, even if the hopes for them to shed any light upon the matter remained slim. Work kept a darkness at bay in Gadreel's mind, and he was glad to be of help even if the work itself would be pointless, as it allowed him to establish a better, healthier bond with his brother. Sam was right: the more seamless their group would be, the better their chances to win against Metatron's loosely knit, freshly and unevenly recruited allies. This work was even beneficial for the fourth member of the group, the only one that remained a wild card, even though Gadreel was regarded as one as well. At least the sentry knew himself to be trustworthy and had a clear understanding of exactly where his loyalties rested: about Dean, nobody knew. More than likely even Dean himself was, at this stage, unsure.

"Do you think the Devil's Brand could be the same thing?" Castiel asked after a while.

Gadreel considered.  
"I do not know. Still, there are more than likely many words for it in the languages of men. It is worth looking into."

"Could you give me the casefile for 78?" the younger sighed and nodded towards the pile of folders they'd brought from the archives.  
Gadreel stepped away from the bookshelf and flipped through the admittedly scarce source material, pulled out a rugged old file labeled #78 and slid it across the table to Castiel without question.

"What do you know of the Mark, Gadreel?" the other asked pointedly, glancing over towards Gadreel as he undid the bind, "I was surprised that you'd heard of it, given - um."

"My imprisonment?"  
Gadreel smiled a bitter smile and settled in one of the chairs opposite the organized chaos of Castiel's workspace.  
"The Mark and how it corrupts men, especially the story of its origins, was a favourite means for my guards to remind me of what I'd done. As if I could have forgotten. It represented the fall of man in its simplest form - a fine-tuned corruption, spun by Lucifer himself after his banishment, to further twist humanity away from God's intention. I don't know much beyond what I've shared and what you already know, however. The details were considered irrelevant. I suppose no one thought I'd play any part in undoing the Mark's evil from upon a human soul."

Castiel huffed, but the huff was warm and accepting in the way that told Gadreel his question had been answered satisfyingly enough. He flitted through the yellowed papers in the case and seemed lost in thought for a while, and as he remained quiet and concentrated, Gadreel spent his time with his mind split between digging into the multiple variations of the same story he'd heard during his imprisonment and torture, and grounding himself to this moment in order to escape the pain that those memories caused. The bunker's air was warm and full of fresh oxygen, and the vessel rested now that he was sitting down; the atmosphere was almost homely, full of activity as it had always been while Gadreel had lived here with the brothers. Even the scent of the old papers and tomes and newer, often heavy books made him feel safe and at ease.  
It felt almost like an invisible blade cut out the bottom of his contentness and caused his insides to freeze when he raised his head to look for Kevin Tran, expecting to see the prophet lurched over his translations nearby as he hadn't seen him the whole day. The reality of the current hit him like a blunt kick to the stomach and he swallowed hard, eyes closing to keep the flashbacks at bay. He still saw the whole of it, felt the panic he'd felt, and when he could breathe and see again, he noticed Castiel looking at him, fingertips stuck between two pages he'd been pulling out of the folder.  
Instead of asking him about it, the younger simply continued what he'd been doing, and Gadreel swallowed again to try and down the hard bit that had knotted his throat.

"The Devil's Brand is an alternative name for a binding sigil a demon uses to tie itself to a human body. It's not the Mark of Cain," the seraph finally said and sighed, pausing to stretch his neck and shoulders before moving the folder aside.  
"So far, I've found nothing but the biblical story in a hundred different forms, which, of course, we both know through and through already. I believe the same goes for Sam and Dean too. In short, this has been for nothing, and it's taken hours."

"Do not lose hope, brother. The books may yet hold the answers that make it worthwhile. I could help if there are some that I can be trusted with."

Castiel cast a calculative, thoughtful look at the pile and picked out two - they were newer publications and least likely to hold valuable information, but Gadreel was glad there were some that he was welcome to search.  
"And not a single mention of the Blade, if I am correct," he asked absently as he ran his finger through the list of contents, twice as fast as the average human would have been able to.

"Case #12. There was a reference to Case #32, which was at the end of the paper noted to be obsolete."

"It has been destroyed?" Gadreel asked, raising his eyes.

Castiel nodded.  
"More than likely, perhaps on purpose, to protect the secret. It's frustrating."

Gadreel nodded.  
"No kidding," he replied as his eyes fell back towards the book, and some part of his mind flared at the borrowed expression, connecting it to the younger Winchester with such ease that for a moment he found himself unsure if he'd been the one speaking at all.  
It took him a moment to search the soul resting quietly inside the vessel and realise that it was neither the man he'd remembered, nor had he spoken in his place or even become more alert to his surroundings: everything about him was as absent, as unaware as usual.

 

* * *

 

The next day dawned quietly; Sam returned from his bedroom on his own a little after four hours had passed, hair messy and skin pale and with pronounced dark rings around his eyes, going straight for the coffee. Gadreel had sat silently for the past hour or so doing nothing in particular, if avoiding the memory of December didn't count for activity in and of itself, and Castiel had spared scarce words to him after reaching the midpoint of the pile of books that seemed to yield them no information whatsoever. Finally, when Sam joined the seraph on the other side of the table and relieved him of the research that hadn't been trusted to Gadreel, the sentry quietly stood and, when no one complained or paid any particular attention to him, left the room.  
He wandered the empty corridors just to get out of the places where the memories lingered heavy and thick like ghosts blocking the flow of fresh air, stopping by open doors and visiting rooms he'd never seen before. He climbed flights of stairs up and down and realised that it would be easy to get lost in the vastness that the bunker hid beneath the simplistic layers of the living quarters and main studies; there were many rooms for stored information and locks that looked so worn and old that they probably didn't even work anymore.  
He found a second way to the upper levels, to a locked, small door that he assumed would lead to some kind of an attic, and upon returning the way he'd come in he noticed he could hear the voices of Sam and Castiel talking and an odd clicking, ticking sound that seemed to come from inside the wall rhythmically, carried by pulses of energy. Next to that sound, on a step of the steep spiralling staircase, he finally sat down: the words of the conversation nearby below him still carried as faint mutterings to where he was, so that he'd know if they'd cease and he'd need to move again to be somewhere he could be found from in order to avoid causing unnecessary concern to his allies. The last thing he wanted was to raise more false alarms, but for some reason solitude called to him now. The exhaustion he'd felt before seemed even deeper and more unyielding than before, and the very thought of continuing - of heading somewhere to do anything at all - seemed almost impossible to achieve. Both of Gadreel's legs suddenly seemed to weight more than he could lift and when he tried to push his foot to the side just to clarify that he could, it barely budged.

The electric ticking lulled him into some partial state of unconsciousness: his eyes froze upon the dimly lit wall ahead of him and the smell of old, moist stone like from a cave or a crypt filled his nose. Suddenly, from some depth inside of him, he realised he craved the solitude and confinement of his cell, and the memory of it felt strangely comforting, if in the same way that death seemed like a soothing, calming possibility.  
It wasn't a new experience, nor was it completely absurd. The prison cell had been his whole world for an unspeakably, unthinkably long time, and ever since he'd been freed from it, the vastness of creation had more than occasionally been overwhelming, even terrifying, for him to exist in. He longed for the simplicity and familiarity of imprisonment although he'd suffered in it more than words could express. The prison had cut him from the constant noise and life of the energies around him and left him with a silence that no living being would ever experience before entering its grave, and the only beings that had existed in that realm with him had been the chosen handful of guardians. There was even simplicity in the relationships of that world: to the guards, Gadreel was nothing. To the torturer, he was the lowest scum. To Gadreel, the guards were simply those on the outside and Thaddeus... Thaddeus was a constant, reliable evil. Abner had been a friend, the sole comfort, in that world. Abner had been the good in it.  
Now, there was no evil, no good, only shades of grey that Gadreel had long since forgotten how to navigate. He wasn't a being made to exist in a world of uncertainty where black and white mixed as they wished, creating a mass of moral dilemmas and conflict where one being's redemption was another's fall and where the heaven of one was the hell of another. He'd shone in a world where order was the law of all and unquestioning obedience and clear commandments were the lifelines of each being; where individuals shared common goals and existed at peace with one another, as what they shared always trumped the differences that separated them.

He'd been the one to let that world burn: he was the reason this mess existed, the very root of suffering and conflict.

The talk downstairs had ceased, but Gadreel barely noticed as he lowered his head into his arms that he'd folded over his knees. His breathing became an ocean that washed ashore somewhere far from here, in a better place, and the burn of his shame and guilt was like a blanket of coals raining upon him from the cobwebbed ceiling.  
This state, he realised, was that of physical exhaustion like mortals experienced, and it mixed seamlessly with the dark that lurked his mindspace. Slowly but decisively he pushed the facts aside and pulled himself back on his feet. He'd find a place for it, and he'd rest; he'd do his best to fight when the fight would come, and before then, he'd make sure he was in a fitting condition for it. It would be the last stand he'd make, but he'd make it for the right reasons and with the right people, and then he'd have his quiet without the pain, the simplicity without the fear.

 

* * *

 

There were rows of bedrooms lining up the corridors of the living quarters. As Gadreel passed that of Sam's, he could hear the man talking with Castiel again - every now and then he was able to make out a word or two from in-between, knowing they were strictly talking about the plans and nothing more. He tried the doors in an attempt to find a bedroom he could use, in which he could safely lie down in for a moment to rest at least his body if nothing else, and although the possibility of unconsciousness however beneficial for him was uncomfortable and scary for him, he'd made up his mind to at least try to make use of the time he was now wasting away.   
Finally, when he'd already begun worrying he might not find an unlocked door, the second to the last had a coppery key sticking out of its lock. Gadreel twisted it and pushed open the quietly creaking door to find another abandoned bedroom with minimal amount of decorations inside: the bed itself was covered with a white sheet to protect it from dust, and next to it stood a small drawer built out of dark wood with a lamp on it. The light didn't work - the bulb had likely died of old age and since the room was unused, no one had replaced it since - so upon entering the sentry left the door ajar for the corridor's warm light to seep into the darkness. Still a little unaccustomed to the plan he ran his fingers to the edge of the sheet and dragged it from the mattress, patted the blanket and the pillow gently with his hands as if to convince himself it was not dangerous or rock solid to touch, before he finally felt certain enough to sit down on it. He stayed there for a good three minutes just looking around and reassuring himself that this was not forbidden or otherwise a bad decision, that at best choosing to rest here would be a neutral way to pass the time and potentially much more beneficial than wandering aimlessly around the base, but actually lying down and relaxing was a concept so foreign to him that he considered abandoning the thought in favour of some more familiar means of regaining strength, only to realise that he had very few sources of energy to draw from. His vessel was one, but it was already hard pressed to support him; it wasn't the endless power supply that Sam Winchester as an archangel's vessel had been, and he was a powerful angel whose grace required a lot of support to recover from injuries as vast as he'd sustained. With Heaven all but closed to him, he couldn't draw directly from the flow that usually granted angels their strength: this was the sole reason they were all stranded here, struggling.  
The only remaining sources of energy were the means that could energize the vessel - eating, sleeping - so that it in turn could provide him the strength that it otherwise couldn't, or a local community of angels. It was undeniably one of the main reasons the angels had turned the factions into small armies; forging those bonds was essential to them in upkeeping what remaining strength each had left to them. The closer the relationship between the angels, the more energy they generated for one another, and the more energy they had to their graces, the more connections they could sustain that in turn provided them with strength. There was no downside to the system, and like the long-range telepathic communication - the 'angel radio' as the more earthbound garrisons had come to call it - it provided an upper hand. The larger the faction, the stronger it was, and its strength literally went beyond the numbers. It made the angels in it healthier, more intact, and brought them closer to what Heaven had provided to them both in terms of safety as well as in power.  
And Gadreel was alone, but so was Castiel, and at least Gadreel still had a grace of his own to support. It wasn't breaking on him, it wasn't burning him out: it was merely tattered and tired, running out of energy to keep up the standards he held for himself, but not out of energy to exist.

These were the thoughts he found himself quieting down to, as if all he'd needed to relax was a series of logical conclusions and reminders of the facts he had to make do with. With a soft thud his vessel landed upon the mattress, head digging into the pillow that regardless of the sheet's protection now spread an invisible cloud of dust into the air around him, and his breathing turned slow and relaxed again. Closing his eyes seemed harmless now: he was only doing what he had to do. It would not take long.


	3. Preparations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I'm miserable, here's a random update.

* * *

 

Castiel gave Sam one last long, lost look before turning and heading downstairs. He seemed to have a much better chance at talking sense into Dean; Sam triggered the guilt and the shame in his brother, and conversations with him only ever seemed to end one way. With Castiel, on the other hand, the older seemed to fall into something of an ease instead, and Sam wasn't sure if it was because Castiel was less a direct source of agony to Dean or simply that he knew how to best address the man without making him defensive. Either or, there was a certain relief in not having to walk down to the dungeon again. The pressure of knowing what he was doing to Dean was enough for Sam to bear and the one thing he absolutely did not want to add to the situation was more stress upon the other. To see him suffering was almost unbearable, and so he stayed out feeling like a coward even though it truly was the best course of action: enjoying it seemed so wrong and made him feel so guilty that it more than likely did away with the actual benefits the opportunity gave Sam, however.  
He glanced around once the seraph's footsteps had vanished, finding the hall as deserted as he remembered it being. The books were still scattered with a variety of papers upon the table but other than that, no signs of life marked the area. At some point - and Sam could barely remember when - Gadreel had walked off again and stayed away ever since. This time the fact didn't concern the hunter. The talk they'd had earlier had given his trust some base to root into, and even after he'd slept for the little while that he'd been able to, the reasoning seemed solid enough. If even half of the things Gadreel had now repeatedly told them were true, he had no reason to return to Metatron or betray them again. That was where he couldn't agree with Castiel's reservations, no matter how much he wanted to; the angel was there to help them, and even if Gadreel's reasons were selfish at the core of it he had to know he wouldn't achieve anything if his reputation remained what it now was, and what especially his service under Metatron had further cemented it as.

With a sigh, Sam headed upstairs towards his bedroom: he wouldn't be able to sleep and that wasn't the plan either, but the laptop's battery was running low after the efforts at locating Metatron - he'd made no appearance since the day before and that was good news considering that their best shot at defeating him was still a work in progress. The cable was on the table in his room and maybe a rerun of all the sources might provide him some comfort while Castiel had his talk with Dean.  
A part of Sam worried for Dean's ability to have a talk, but when he'd checked earlier, the man had been alive and strong enough to be angry at him and would most likely remain in that state for Castiel's visit just the same. Even his bloodlust seemed to have settled somewhat from the day before. That was good news: perhaps intervention would work to their benefit after all. Or maybe not. Maybe the older would collapse again soon enough, maybe the condition would get worse. Sam only knew that his own experience had nearly left him dead, and no one knew how deep the corruption within his brother had seeped by now - if he even stood a chance of recovering from it. But he _had_ to. What was the alternative? That he'd die an unsung death someplace? Was his soul marked for hell again and would he eventually emerge as a demon, perhaps a Knight of Hell - was that the end of the deal he'd made? The thought made Sam shudder as he reached the door of his bedroom. Something was out of place, however; a detail about his surroundings was off and it stopped his hand before he'd opened the door. Confused, he looked around, trying to decide what it was that had cut him from his fears, and then he saw it: one of the doors further back was open. It wasn't by much but the was definitely ajar unlike it had been before, allowing some visibility to one of the unused bedrooms. The sight of it gave Sam an unexpected sensation of relief, as he'd most likely now located Gadreel from a completely harmless place, once more proving Sam's judgement of him solid for the time being.

His fingers slid from the handle of his bedroom's door, the thought of recharging his laptop long gone from his mind, and instead he chose to move to check on the other room instead just to give himself conclusion on the matter. His barefooted steps barely echoed in the corridor and he worried he might reach the room so unannounced it would scare the angel, perhaps make him dangerous: Sam didn't know how jumpy he was, but what he knew pointed towards probability. For that reason and none other he cleared his throat near the open door, trying to make his steps more audible than they'd normally be, and only slowly reached for the handle.  
Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't what he found.  
The angel had curled up upon the unmade bed, seemingly asleep although that sounded odd for a celestial; his side rose and fell quietly as Sam watched and the expression on his features was blissfully calm and undisturbed even as the light from the corridor hit it. Quietly, Sam moved inside. He pushed the door back so that the light no longer pointed directly at the older's face and afterwards he just stood there, unsure whether he should be concerned or relieved. Angels didn't sleep. They did fall unconscious when badly hurt, but Gadreel appeared undamaged, although after first being injured in an assassination attempt against Metatron and almost immediately afterwards when Dean had attacked him, the option wasn't completely improbable. It seemed highly unlikely that he'd moved into a bedroom and on a bed to pass out, however, so at least it had to be intentional. Another chance was that this wasn't Gadreel at all - that he'd somehow left the premises, leaving behind his empty vessel.  
Suddenly Sam wished he knew how to check that. The usual surefire ways of cutting or banishing an angel were hardly measures he wanted to take now, and there was no less invasive way to make sure as far as he was aware. His thoughts escaped to the sigil Dean had told him about, the one that could bypass an angel to address the vessel directly, but Sam neither knew what it was nor did he have the means to create one now, and he wasn't entirely certain what he'd say to a confused human being if he did end up uncovering one by force from underneath the layers of grace.

Briefly he considered just leaving, but the more he thought into it, the more suspicious it seemed, and he would never forgive himself if he'd let an enemy trick him like this. At the end, he didn't have a choice, and with an air of uncertainty he moved closer instead.

"Gadreel?"

The name prompted no reaction; the male in front of him kept breathing steady, heavy and quiet in deep inhales and near inaudible exhales. Sam hesitated before sitting on the bed. He half-expected an attack, either because this had all been an act or because he simply jumpscared the other into taking action, but nothing happened. A tense sigh left him as he reached out, laying his palm over the other's arm and nudging him gently.  
"Hey, um."  
What do you say to an unconscious angel? Do you ask if anyone's home, or if they're okay, or if they're just pretending? Do you ask for the reason, do you worry or express doubt? This was a nuclear weapon laid out on the old mattress, and Sam had no idea what made it tick.  
"Are you - in there? Gadreel."

Finally, he got a reaction. It was slow and calm in the way that a reaction is when the one waking up doesn't fully become aware of his surroundings all at once but rather reaches consciousness gradually. Gadreel's eyes turned first towards the wall on the opposite end of the room, then towards Sam's knee and past it at the light pouring in from the corridor, and when the green in his eyes was illuminated from that angle the revealed depth made them seem older than the flesh they belonged to, as if through them a spark of the ancient grace was showing. Then, finally, Gadreel caught Sam's eyes into his view and a small, uncertain frown spread into his expression.

"What is it?" he asked, voice sleepy and dulled by the fading restful state Sam had forced him out of.

"Just checking in."

Although it was clear the older had no idea what that meant, he nodded briefly before closing his eyes again. A flash of faint blue glowed through his closed lids, presumably as he fell asleep again; Sam wasn't sure what to make of it, if he'd spoken with Gadreel or the vessel, and what it even meant. But at least now he was certain there was an angel in there. That was good enough for him.

 

* * *

 

"Where is Gadreel?"  
There wasn't the sharp distrust in Castiel's voice this time; instead, it was weary. Sam leaned over the metal railing of the stairway and chuckled.

"Secure, I need to ask you something about that in a bit. But how's my brother?" he asked.

Castiel looked towards the way he'd come from and then up again in Sam's direction, finally shrugging.  
"I'd say he's better. He's more lucid and held-together. I think we may be able to plan with him today, and when we get the information on Metatron, I'm afraid we won't be more ready than that."

Sam nodded.  
"Good. Okay."  
He moved downstairs, the steps ringing under his steps. The last couple he hopped down, stomach aching from hunger that he'd forgotten he experienced in the first place - no wonder he was lightheaded and disorganized. He'd last eaten a day ago, although he couldn't quite remember what it was that he'd swallowed then.  
"Yeah, so, Gadreel. He seems to be asleep."

"Asleep?"  
Castiel tilted his head and frowned, but the expression soon smoothened from him and was replaced by a weary face and a deep sigh to accompany it.  
"I'm not as surprised to hear that as I should be."

"So that's - a thing. A thing that actually happens to angels."

Castiel nodded.  
"We're all struggling, Sam. With Heaven closed, the main power source is locked away. Gadreel probably has no choice. He will be fine."

"Okay. Yeah. At first - I guess I thought he'd just, you know, left."

"Did you make sure that he hasn't?"

"Well, there's an angel in there. He wasn't exactly willing to communicate but I figured it's enough that I check. Besides, I think we would have noticed if a grace exited the bunker. We're basically blocking the only way out."

Castiel nodded again.  
"You're... you're right. I'm sorry, I'm growing paranoid. All of this - Metatron's plans have undone all my work and I simply expect it to happen again. Gadreel is an obvious weak point and I'm just waiting for him to betray us even though I think if Metatron was truly planning something to undo us here, he wouldn't send in Gadreel, he'd -"

"Send the Trojan horse, yeah. Not something we can look at and know right away that it's going to bite back. So... the only thing we need to make sure now is that Dean doesn't kill him at sight, and we're good to go, right?"

"I wish it was that easy," the seraph said with a small smile, his blue eyes scanning Sam in an exhausted manner.  
It seemed they were all equally done for: for a moment Sam's mind flashed him an image of the entire team passed out on various surfaces, but he discarded it with a quiet sigh. The very thought of sleep made him wish he could just crawl back into his bed and make a renewed attempt at taking the edge from the tiredness. Instead he stretched and cleared his throat and nodded, however delayedly.

"Back to work, then? Let's find out what Metatron's up to."

 

* * *

 

"Elias. Maybe Nuriel. I cannot name a certain source, and they all carry a risk."  
Gadreel seemed appropriately fluffed up and spaced out, and when Sam had out of sheer curiosity slipped a cup of coffee in front of him, he'd unquestioningly accepted it.

"Nuriel used to be one of mine," Castiel sighed, "I might be able to talk sense into her. I hoped I wouldn't have had to do this twice."

A smile lingered upon the sentry's lips.  
"Are you saying you wish I'd stayed Metatron's second-in-command, Castiel?"

Castiel's head jerked up and he frowned. Then, briefly, a smile flashed upon his features as well and he shook his head.  
"Of course not. I would rather not meet you on the wrong side of a field of battle."

"You would stand a fair chance against me, brother. Even in your state. I've seen you fight, and I was impressed," Gadreel noted, the compliment clear in his tone.  
Castiel seemed to weight the honesty of it and decide against accepting it, even though he did seem flattered regardless.

Sam slid into his chair and cast an anticipating look into the direction of the dungeon; he wanted nothing more than to drag his brother out, but knowing that what he'd bring up might not be Dean at all always killed the growing nervous excitement with a dull, painful blow.

"Araqiel is a good angel," Gadreel continued after a while, "His priority still lies in protecting the earth and all that lives upon it, and he's been increasingly dissatisfied with Metatron's ineffective means of preventing our kind from wreaking havoc upon creation. He might not listen to you but if he will, his allegiance could almost be guaranteed. At least he should cooperate with our cause for this one attempt at restoring order."

"I've never spoken with Araqiel directly," Castiel spoke thoughtfully, "He is a powerful angel."

"He was badly injured in the fall and tends to avoid direct confrontation. You would be safe, Castiel."

"Hm."

"More so if you could talk to Nuriel first and get her to see our point of view. He trusts her."

Castiel and Sam both examined Gadreel; a pair of eyes on both sides of him keenly staring into him, apparently trying to undress the layers of protection from him to see into his bared core made him visibly uneasy. He kept looking from Castiel to Sam and back, uncertain whom he should be addressing, and the longer the silence lasted the deeper the discomfort in him grew until it was almost entertaining to watch.  
Finally Castiel redeemed him from the situation.  
"You know a lot about them," he noted, unable to mask the doubt from his voice.

"Of course," Gadreel replied patiently, "I hired them. I organized them. I know the weak spots in Metatron's ranks like no one else does, perhaps not even him. He was never very interested in his followers, Castiel, and that is a weakness we can use to our advantage. He saw angels as nothing but numbers that proved his power over us all, his - personal score. The more angels he leads, the more succesful he feels he is, and right now, there is no one with more angels united behind them than he has. It does not mean what he thinks it does. Leading an army to victory is about more than just the number of soldiers."

"I could not agree more," Castiel replied.  
He was the last one still standing up, and his eyes were upon the map onto which Gadreel had marked the last location of the portal to Heaven. He'd said its replacement would certainly be delayed in his absence, and that Metatron most likely would not pay much attention to the fact, but Sam didn't feel too confident about it. Once it would be gone, it would be gone, and finding it again might prove a task more difficult than what they could afford.

"Can you grant us access to them?" the seraph asked, cutting Sam's thoughts off.

Gadreel nodded.  
"With certainty. I have not yet been called; they might have no idea I've been missing yet. I expect no call for the next few days, so we have plenty of time to prepare. If you wish to talk to them today, I can arrange it."

"I'm unsure about this, Gadreel. If we blow our cover -"

"But if we have access to the inside, more angels that can back us up, the smaller the chance that we will be expected. I must press the point on Elias; he is close to Metatron. He is a scribe like Metatron, he keeps up with the new God's plans. He would know when is the best time to strike."

"And why would Elias share that information with us?"

"Not us," Gadreel noted with a smile, "but he would trust it to me."

"You want us to let you back in? Alone?"

"I want nothing of the kind, but it is the best plan I can think of."

Sam cleared his throat.  
"He's right, you know."

"I know," Castiel said almost dismissively, "That is not what I worry about. In case they've noted your absence already, that would be a death sentence. You ask me to give you the order to risk your life for this mission."

"Castiel, it is not me Metatron wants," Gadreel assured the older in the least reassuring manner Sam could imagine, "If he is planning on a trap, he will wait until we are both in it. I am trying to make sure he will not succeed. He wants his grand finale."

Castiel stared at him.  
"You're telling me that if there is a trap," he spoke then with a definite air of despair, "then you will with certainty lead me into it. You're not making much of a case for yourself, Gadreel."

"I merely face the likelihood that he has planned this out just as we have, Castiel. The only difference is that we are vastly outnumbered and he has made himself the new God. He may well know that we are coming for him. He may even know how. I would put nothing past him. He is dangerous, more so than you'd like to think, brother."

"Is that even possible?" Sam sighed.  
He felt mostly useless: he knew nothing of the angels, of the factions, of anything that was now so crucial in this upcoming battle. He was a blade and not much more in it, but when his time would come, if only Dean would stand with him, he'd know how to play out his role.

Gadreel nodded.  
"I have no idea what powers the tablet grants him, but he's so far been very succesful at manipulating us all. I cannot trust anything or anyone as long as he is writing his story, and I'd rather believe that I am still acting a part in that story than falsely think myself out of his reach."

Finally, Castiel sat down. He seemed to melt into his chair and the trench coat appeared larger on him than it in full reality could be.  
"What is that book?" he asked wearily.

"I have no idea," Gadreel repeated with a hint of frustration in his voice - it was clear from him that he hated the thought of someone controlling him like a puppeteer from behind the scenes, but also that he firmly believed it was within the realm of possibilities, "All I know is that whatever he writes, he believes will come true. He thinks he is God, not that he's playing one; that his story unfolds as he wills it to. I cannot say it has not more or less done exactly that to date."

"Brilliant," Sam muttered.  
No one seemed to have much to add to that. The silence after his contribution lasted for minutes, only interrupted by the sighs and huffs let out by both Sam and Castiel: Gadreel, on the other hand, was quiet and still even as he sipped his coffee, moving nothing but his arm and his lips like a robot to achieve the deed.

"Do you think it safe if one of us drives you nearby the portal?" Castiel asked after a while, eyes turned to examine Gadreel's cup rather than his face.

Gadreel shook his head.  
"I will take the bus. If I am not back by tomorrow morning, expect the worst. If I succeed, I will make sure you have a secure way to contact Elias, or in case that cannot be arranged, I will have that information myself. Meanwhile, I suggest you look for ways to get to Nuriel and Araqiel."


	4. Misguided

* * *

 

Sam knew it wasn't wise, but the loneliness was killing him. The time was past eleven in the night and even though he'd slept, he couldn't call himself refreshed: after four cups of coffee, he craved for company more than he craved peace and victory.  
So he headed downstairs instead and pushed aside the hidden door: Dean sat on the mattress in the middle of the room, surrounded still by the smell of vomit even though it was fainter than it had been the night before. He appeared pale and weakened but flashed a smile at Sam regardless.  
"Hey, baby brother."

"Hey, Dean."  
Sam closed the door behind him, hoping he'd end up on the opposite side of it alone and alive after the visit was done.  
"Everything okay?"

"Yeah."  
Dean chuckled and shrugged, only with one shoulder however as if shaking off an itch. The movement turned into a stretch and soon enough he'd lifted his other hand to rub at the tense muscles on the side. A grimace passed his features as Sam set aside the bucket from spreading the foul smell and sat in front of his brother instead.  
"What time is it? Man, I'm almost hungry. It's like I haven't eaten for weeks."

"Around eleven."

"Where are your fine-feathered companions, Sammy?"

Sam shrugged.  
"In the wind," he replied dully, "preparing our shot."

"Nice."  
Dean looked at him and seemed to be holding back some choice words; Sam appreciated his sudden self-control.  
"Nice. Okay. You were right, by the way. Sleep does help. I've gotten, like, an hour in a week. It was great. I had the worst nightmares and I woke up thinking my own brother and my best friend locked me inside the dungeon in my goddamn home, but I'm really glad that's not true, because I'd be mighty pissed if it was."

Sam chuckled dully.  
"I'm glad you're at least hanging onto the attitude, man."

"Yeah, just wait 'til you launch me at Gadreel."

"Just... just don't, okay. We need him. I mean, I don't like it either, okay? But - even if what you said is true, even if we are okay with just the three of us as always, a fourth man really can't hurt."  
It was becoming a habit, him sitting there defending Gadreel against everyone who by all means had less to hold against the sentry than he did. It was frustrating and made him question himself and he wished at least for that to stop; he was a peacekeeper by nature, and there was no reason for any of them to stab Gadreel today. If everything would go well, a reason would never rise again. The past sins - they were forgiven because circumstances didn't allow much room for judgement, and because there was no momentary forgiveness. It didn't work like that. They'd made the decision, well, Sam and Castiel had, to give the sentry another chance, and as angry as Sam still was about Dean's decision to take over the ultimate judgement of all things, that handshake he'd given the angel briefly before attempting to murder him where he stood counted just as much as their agreement did. Dean just had to deal with it.

"Say what you will, Sam, I can't stand that filth in my home."

"Yeah, I heard you, and I don't care. It's necessity, Dean. Like letting him possess me was necessity to you. Whatever you say, man, I'm not going to bow down to you because at any moment you can just decide to kill me or anyone else if we don't please you."

"Sam -"

"No, shut the hell up. I'm serious. It doesn't work that way."

"Sam."

"Yeah?"

"You're talking about what I said earlier. When we left. When I told you I don't give a crap what you or anyone else thinks or has to say. Right?"

"Well, that's the cleaned-up version of what I was hearing, but yeah, I'm talking about that. That and your general behaviour. Christ, Dean, have you looked in a mirror lately?"

Dean grimaced.  
"The clearest thing I have in here is my own bile so yeah, no, I haven't gotten to look at myself for a while now. But what I'm saying - you're probably right about more than just the sleep. Like, uh, the Blade. It screws with me, man."

Sam tensed up. This was leading somewhere: this was Dean when he was trying to tell him something that he'd pushed much deeper than he'd ever wanted to, something that scared him.  
"Okay?" the younger prompted, trying to encourage the man in front of him to keep going, but Dean hesitated.

"It doesn't really matter," the other finally grunted, shifting in discomfort, "What I'm saying is - is that I'm sick. I'm really, really sick, and I don't mean the - the physical thing. I have this... I have this itch, this - it just - sometimes I don't really know what I'm doing, Sammy. Like yesterday. It's just a blur. It's like I become this - this animal. I just stop caring and it feels so damn good I don't even want to go back anymore. It's like, it's like I know it's changing me. But I don't want to stop and I don't know... I don't know if I can anymore."  
He laughed, but there wasn't any happiness or amusement in the dried-out, dead sounds that escaped his hoarse throat. Then he shook his head as if to undo the previous conflicting signal and ran his hand through his oily hair, sighing.  
"I've been so angry, Sam. The whole year I've just wanted a way out of the guilt and I've just been angry at everything."

"Yeah," Sam replied quietly, "I know how that - I know how it feels."

"Right? Well, I guess I deserve this. All of it. I mean, for what I did to - uh - nevermind. I'm just saying that maybe I should... yeah. I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm sorry. For everything."

"Yeah."  
A silence.  
"I know. I - I don't... I don't care, Dean. We'll deal with this, okay? The way we've always - we'll figure it out, man. Somehow. You've just gotta let us help and you've gotta trust us with this."

"Yeah, okay. Is this the part where we kiss and make up?"

"Shut up, Dean."

 

* * *

 

Gadreel returned at two in the morning; Sam watched him slide onto a seat in the study and aim a glassed-out stare to some void that was invisible to where the younger stood. This was an hour after he'd received a call from Castiel: everything so far had gone according to plan on his end, even if results were scarce and might take the whole of the night to progress to a decisive point of any kind. When the hunter stepped out from his lurking spot - the corner of the corridor he'd been in the moment Gadreel had entered the bunker and in which he'd stayed out of curiosity to see how the angel reacted to being left alone with all the opportunities spread around him only to find out there was no reaction to be witnessed whatsoever - the sentry lifted his head and a smile lit up his features at recognition.

"Sam," he called out warmly, standing up although he'd only just sat down, "Have you heard of Castiel?"

Sam nodded.  
"An hour ago, give or take. He's okay. Busy, and okay."

"And yourself?"

"I caught some rest and spoke with Dean. I think he's - doing better."

It was Gadreel's turn to nod.  
"It must be difficult for you."  
He cast a glance towards the corridor from which Sam had emerged: the same from which the downstairs could be accessed.  
"Seeing him in this state."

"Seeing him is okay," Sam sighed, pulling up a chair for himself, "It's not being able to say if he's him or if he's someone I don't know that's worse. Not being able to tell when he's lying and when he's telling the truth, too. I want to trust what he says but a part of me knows he'll do anything to get the Blade back."  
He didn't know why he was telling this to the sentry, but Gadreel seemed to be listening, and he seemed to be listening right. Sam watched him for a moment before shaking his head and turning away again.  
"So, how was the run? Do we have a date?"

Gadreel settled back on a chair, this time opposite to the one Sam had taken, and slightly to the left of him so that they weren't directly facing and Sam had the choice to keep staring forwards instead of taking direct eye contact. The younger was relieved about this; the alternative made him anxious and dizzy when he imagined it. Either he was stressed or he just couldn't feel comfortable with facing the being that had possessed him for months against his will; whichever it was, Gadreel seemed well aware of the fact and respected it, leaving him the opportunity to retain his personal space and comfort without making the situation awkward for either of them. It was surprisingly fine-tuned social awareness from an angel, but on the other hand nothing about it seemed accidental, and perhaps Gadreel felt similarly himself. Perhaps that nervousness and discomfort was shared between them.

"Metatron has set up a three-point plan. The next big day is the day after tomorrow. I do not know what the plan is - Elias did not have the details - but he will be out for the most of the day, and I don't think it is a good idea to delay the strike further. The next opportunity might not come as soon as we need it."

"The day after tomorrow, huh. That's pretty soon."  
Sam brushed his hand through his hair and allowed his thoughts to wander to Dean. Then, unexpectedly, he let out a quiet laughter.  
"I can't wait to hold the leash on my brother. Have you thought how to get Cas up there with you yet?"

Gadreel shook his head.  
"All my plans are weaker than I'd hoped for. I don't have anything solid. Perhaps Castiel has better ideas."

"I feel like we're all pretty much just trusting our luck here. Normally - normally at this stage we'd have something, you know? But the whole past year me and Dean have... we didn't take part in this fight. It doesn't feel like it's ours, but it fell back to us anyway."

"I know very little of what it's been like for you," Gadreel said carefully, "but I do not doubt that you feel tired of having to answer for all of this. It has nothing to do with you. I am glad to be able to fight for my family, even if I started out on the wrong side - but I've not yet paid for what I've done. I have a lot to atone for and bringing this fight to an end will only be a fraction of what I must do to pay for the things I can. But you and your brother - you've already given more than your share. I wish I could help. I thought I was, but I only ever made it worse for you both."

Sam glanced at the older and thought of Kevin; the hall seemed larger for the time being, like a humongous cave had been uncovered from behind the familiar walls that now stretched much higher and further than he'd ever thought they'd done before.  
"Yeah, we really didn't need your help. I mean, Dean thought I did. But I didn't, and I think you know that."

"All too well, I'm afraid."

"So you acknowledge that. It's more than Dean does."

"I think Dean knows it very well," Gadreel noted, "he simply does not want to admit he was wrong. Not about this. He doesn't dare to imagine a world without you, and he cannot accept that the choice is not his to make."

"Did you always know this or did it just occur to you at some point?" Sam asked.

"I realised it quite recently. At first I thought I was doing the right thing. It seems to be a recurring theme in my life, and I've made many mistakes thinking it was for a greater good. I wanted to believe I was helping both him and you, even if the means to the end were not as honest as I would have preferred. I was blinded by my fear as well: all I knew was that I needed a safe place away from everyone who might recognise me and wish to continue punishing me for what they think I did all those years ago. Little did I know that the two of you were so deeply involved with my kind that you might have as well been angels yourselves."  
A small, ironic smile passed the sentry's lips and he looked down at the table perhaps in an attempt to hide it.  
"It seemed like a good plan then. To protect myself while I healed and protected you."

"When you put it like that it sure as hell doesn't sound as bad as it was."

Gadreel nodded.  
"If I'd been more honest - but telling the truth seemed like sentencing myself to death, or worse. I wanted a second chance, an opportunity to prove that I was not the stories told of me. Now I am not so sure anymore. Perhaps the legends are more true to who I am than I ever allowed myself to think."

Sam didn't know what to tell him; he wasn't the one to judge him, he simply didn't know enough. His memories were a blur and his emotions got in the way of rationally examining the bits that he did have left, but the last thing he wanted was to confirm any of the older's doubts, yet he did not know how to counter them either. For the first time he felt like he saw with clarity the facts that he'd tried to deny, however; that the angel in front of him was far from in control of his own fate, that his decisions were ultimately guided by factors beyond his powers. Not only that, but Gadreel was a victim of torture, and although Sam had experienced the worst of it himself, he'd still only suffered under special circumstances. Even counting the cage that he rather did not recall at all, the time he'd lost to that particular hell was but a fraction of what Gadreel had suffered. He knew what it was like to fear that it was all that there would ever be for him; that the pain and hatred would be the sole thing that he'd ever experience, and how little by little even the memories of what had been before would fade. He knew what it was like to know that there was no one else to blame, yet at the same time to firmly believe it was a punishment much beyond the crimes he'd committed - that he didn't deserve half of it. He knew it, and when he tried to imagine it a thousandfold like it had to have been for the other he lost his breath and sight at once, finding his balance swaying and his ears ringing loudly to the sudden loss of senses. When his vision started returning to him again, he had a hand over his, fingers gripping his palm gently but firmly, and a pair of eyes keenly upon him with concern in them as the sole expression.

"I'm okay," he heard himself say, "I'm okay. It's - the stress, I need to drink something. Eat. I meant eat."  
He had no idea what he'd meant, but the nausea made him aware that whatever it had been, it had been a lie first and foremost. He wrestled his hand free - a non-effort in itself as Gadreel was hardly holding it tight - and pressed the two as a cup over his face, pretending to just rub at his forehead but in truth trying to calm down the hyperventilation that now seemed an inevitability. This had been an almost everyday thing for a long time, resurfacing at its worst every time something stressful came up and it seemed that his life never lacked such a period. He'd learned to control it to a degree by suppressing the worst of the memories and learning meditation and breathing techniques by heart, but sometimes, especially when his own stupidity drove him into exercising overt empathy it seemed, nothing could stop it from happening.

"I'll get you something."

The words echoed in Sam's mind and he didn't fully register them before the angel had already disappeared from his sight; turning around to call after him seemed like a bad idea, so he simply prayed that he'd feel good enough to at least drink a little when the older would return. In a moment's time he found himself downing a glass of ice cold water, suddenly so thirsty it felt as if he'd not seen a drop for days, and Gadreel avoided looking at him at all while he gathered himself from the mess he'd so quickly fallen into.

"I'm sorry," Sam uttered into the glass.  
He wasn't sure what he was sorry for but it was embarrassing: the only person who'd ever seen him like that...

No - there were two, he suddenly realised. There were two and the other one of them sat next to him, knowing exactly and precisely what had just happened. The realisation made Sam's stomach turn and he lowered the glass, conflicted and uncertain what to think of anything anymore. That was why Gadreel knew what to bring him: cold water and two cookies, the exact thing he'd taken when he felt the attacks sneaking up in the middle of the night when the dark of his bedroom started glowing with the faint orange of the flames he feared were gathering underneath his bed. That was why he'd held his hand the same way Dean had done his whole life when nightmares had woken him up as a child or later, even as late as after Jessica's death. This was all stolen information, and the usage of it felt like a renewal of the violation itself, a repeated crime - but at the same time, it felt so good, had happened so naturally and without pretense that it had cut off the edge of the terror itself quicker than Sam could have hoped for.

If there was one thing he hated it was knowing he'd enjoyed something that humiliated him. This wasn't the first time, and it surely wouldn't be the last. That seemed to be the very core of his whole relationship with this angel: Gadreel's presence gave him intense comfort on a level that he could barely begin to understand, yet at the same time he knew that in and of itself to be nothing but a symptom of what Gadreel had done to him. There were no words for a violation so profound and throughout, and no matter how much Sam wanted to forgive it, having to come face to face with it here only served to remind him that forgiving meant letting go, and letting go meant so much more than just forgiving. It meant that it was alright to take from him everything that was most fundamentally, most sacredly his own - his flesh, his right to his body, his choice over his own life - and that there were no consequences for such an act. It meant that his opinion of himself was so low that he'd let anyone, anything walk right over him if the situation demanded it, that he'd swallow his pride and just let it happen because he was powerless to decide otherwise; that he wasn't more than something to use for the ends of others, at the whim of others, without care for his own desires, his consent.

Sam found his head pressing down between his arms crossed onto the table and the only sound he could hear was his own arrhythmic breathing, the wheezing of his lungs that simply could not gather enough oxygen from the air that flowed in and out at a pace faster than a rabbit's heartbeat, and his whole skin burned at the contact of the older's hand upon his again.  
Instead of releasing himself, he held Gadreel's hand in turn.

 

* * *

 

 

The fear faded slowly. When he was certain his legs would carry him reliably Sam downed half the remaining water alongside with a single chocolate-chip cookie sitting by it, wondered for a moment if his stomach would hold and when it did he finally stood up.  
More for the sake of ending this encounter than to prove that yes, the time was late indeed, Sam dug out his phone and noted he'd try to get another four hours at least to make sure he'd be rested for the upcoming day and hopefully for the one chosen for the fight as well.  
"Wake me up if Castiel shows," he added, although his voice was cautious and his eyes were addressing the dimming screen of the cell in his hand.  
He pushed it back in his pocket and glanced at Gadreel, who nodded minimalistically.

"I will wait for him, then," the sentry confirmed, almost as if he'd had other plans that Sam's order now trumped.  
Instead of asking, the younger spun around on his heels and headed for the stairway. He felt like he'd done nothing but slept for the past two days, but the quality of rest had been abysmal to say at least and none of the short naps he'd taken had been more than exactly that. A good night's rest was something he'd learned to do without but to make up for that he needed to at least sleep somewhat restfully the few hours he got, and after what he'd just went through... He felt as if his lungs had, in place for the oxygen they'd lost the ability to process, consumed the energy he'd had left to himself for the night. The phone's screen had shown the time to be 4:13 in the morning; somehow, two hours had slipped past him. Castiel would likely return before eight but there was always a chance that he'd take longer, especially if convincing the angels would turn out to be as difficult as it often seemed to be. The promise of sleep was a minor blessing; as Sam closed his door, he made sure to lock it from the inside and move the key upon his bedside drawer, as far from the door as possible without appearing overly paranoid to his own judgement.  
That was an older habit, but he'd briefly dropped it after they'd moved into the bunker. He'd felt safe here. After he'd watched his own hands take the life of one of his best friends, a man he'd considered something akin to a younger brother and his responsibility, he'd no longer felt that about the place. Then after waking to Dean barging in no more than a week ago, he'd finally snapped: the door would be locked and the key would be right there beside him, and _no one_ would enter his lair unless specifically granted access by him. Even if his damn body wasn't his alone, his room had at the very least better be.

The bed creaked welcomingly as he sat on it, setting the alarm but erasing it almost immediately. If he'd be granted the opportunity to sleep five, six hours, he'd not cut it short out of habit, not even out of concern. Castiel was an angel fully capable of taking care of himself, and Gadreel was taking time for him. If he'd be gone longer than necessary, surely the sentry would contact him and make sure he was alright - that was, unless he'd deliberately sent him to a trap.

A frustrated huff left Sam as he landed on his back on the bed, the phone still in his hand.  
There were multiple reasons for what he was near prepared to call a spout of insomnia but the leading one, the one that was the most difficult to overcome, was this. The moment he landed his ass on the bed, the worry came. Next came the two, three other worries piled on top of that worry, and from then on they'd only keep multiplying like the locusts of Egypt, swarming his mind to the point where his feet grew tired of it and dragged him out of the bed and back downstairs to the pretense of usefulness, of action.  
His fingertip slid across the touch screen and opened a blank message.

_Call me if you're in trouble. Going to catch some sleep while I can._

The message was sent at 4:25 and Sam hoped Castiel would open it and know that it meant just making his phone ring instead of an actual phone call. You couldn't always tell how savvy the seraph would be with the finer details, but hell, he was a soldier. He'd find a way that best suit him.

A yawn broke through Sam's tension and he rolled around, hand slipping underneath the blanket he'd lain on top of and pulling it over him. Then he rolled around again to grab the other end and kicked the whole thing around so that he eventually ended up underneath it and not in the middle of a roll of it; the mattress bent to embrace him with the sheet's cool fabric feeling more than just welcome on his body but as he settled to rest, something was still bothering him, and it wasn't the light he hadn't turned off. More likely it was the reason he hadn't done so yet, a thought that still pestered him so that his mind couldn't invite sleep in as a realistic option, something that had bugged him for a longer while but that he'd simply locked out and decided not to think about. When his fingertips stubbornly pushed the lights off, the switch just barely close enough to his bed for his hand to reach, he was still chasing that thought like it was a wild horse and he'd forgotten the ropes with which to tie it down.


	5. The Other Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [ThymekeNerada](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ThymekeNerada).

* * *

 

Gadreel had walked around the study four times. He'd gone to stand in the kitchen and returned after ten minutes, landed back on the chair he'd left an hour earlier, and tuned into the absolute silence over the angelic communications. He was used to that, even if most angels more than likely were not. He'd been cut out of the network such a long time ago that these brief silences where no one said anything out of the fear it would reach the wrong ears was more the usual state to him than the banters, the debates, the cries for help or the recruitment speeches that still sometimes popped up. On occasion, and that had been a pleasant surprise for him, there were multiple voices speaking like they'd used to, only to exchange common information generally as long as it held no strategic value. War had changed them: the network had originally been established so that strategically important news could be shared quickly and effortlessly. It was an army station, not a common room for light talk, but the more the angels had turned upon one another, the further it had come from its original purpose. Multiple layers were established: some of them had for years been accessible even by Gadreel and the other prisoners, and these were often still used for the common cause. It was via these channels and what his guards and Thaddeus had told him that he'd originally learned of Castiel. Today, however, no one had spoken much. Not even on the frequency connecting only Metatron's allies, amongst which Gadreel still believed he counted as far as official information went.

He was restless, unable to just sit and wait as he'd been ordered to do, and because staying in one place wasn't crucial he allowed himself the movement. Somehow speaking with Sam had only managed to highlight how little he'd been able to explain himself and how everything he said could be read wrong, or simply came out in a way that he hadn't meant. He had no idea what had triggered the attack that he'd witnessed - that Sam had allowed him to witness - but he'd not made it any better, and the reason why made him even more uneasy than he'd been beforehand. He hadn't meant to make it worse. He'd tried to help, and he'd tried to do it right, but it seemed that every time that he did his best, the results always somehow ended up the opposite of what he'd aimed for.  
If he'd known how to do it, he would have apologised, but it seemed pointless when he had no idea what he'd done wrong to begin with. The only thing he knew how to do was to remain here and do exactly as he'd been told to do, but it wasn't fixing the issue. It only made it unlikely that the situation would worsen from what it already was, and if that was the best he could do, then it was what he had to concentrate on.

Sam Winchester meant the whole world to him, he slowly realised. The human was something he considered the closest thing he had left to a friend - the surest ally he had. Castiel didn't trust him, or they would have shared an open link within the communication (and perhaps this was the sole reason he still listened to the silence, hoping to hear from the younger even though he knew he would not). Dean hated him, for good reasons and then some, and didn't want him anywhere near his family. Gadreel understood that and respected it, but the truth was that Dean was an enemy to him and under the current circumstances neither of them intended to or even could fix the issue. It was dangerous to have two weak links that would immediately break upon contact, but these were the terms that they'd already agreed to proceed with, and there was nothing Gadreel would be able to do about it beyond making sure that at least he would not deliberately worsen the situation.  
He didn't know if he would have been able, or willing, to reach out to the hunter if the man had not been infected with the Mark, but it hardly mattered now. It was no secret what they were, and after this was dealt away with, Gadreel would likely not be there for the grand judgement. No one would have to tell him that he was not welcome here if he'd die protecting them. In the unlikely case that he'd live...

The thought made him hurt.  
No, he was not welcome here. He was a necessary evil. No matter what he'd do, when Metatron would be defeated, he'd have no place with them anymore. And even if Sam had forgiven him, Gadreel thinking the man a friend to him was nothing but a false comfort, as the feeling most certainly was not mutual. There was nothing he could do to change it, just like there was nothing he could do to reach out to Abner after what he'd done to him. For those crimes, he did deserve to be alone.  
But for now, at least he had the illusion of hope; a soul that did not outright dislike him, even though he surely had not earned that privilege.

 

* * *

 

The day broke with news, a summary of plans, and a visit to Dean's lair. The man listened quietly to Sam recount the conversation that he'd been excluded from, and Castiel tried his best to get the older brother to partake, to add anything, but Dean remained unwilling to contribute and avoided taking direct contact to either. It was frustrating, but still better than day one had been. He wasn't throwing up and aggressive like a wild beast, he was merely withdrawn and hurt but seemed to have submitted to the inevitability of it. Castiel stayed with him, to make sure he had a friend, and Sam ate breakfast, showered, ate breakfast again and realised once more that one of them had all but disappeared.

The wind outside was cold and biting; it carried with it the thick blanket of rain clouds, but no rain was falling yet and with the tears in the fabric of the uniform grey further away Sam couldn't say for sure that it would. The road was empty as were the fields around it, but the hunter still took his walk, hiking through a path he'd found months earlier and returning twenty minutes after leaving the bunker. The next place he looked from was the bedroom he'd last found Gadreel from, and to his minor surprise and slightly larger comfort, that was where the older was again. Much like him, the angel seemed to have made it a priority to be at least rested for the battle; he'd curled up against the now retracted blanket, which sat in a heap against the small of his back, and he'd ditched the leather jacket on the chair opposite of the bed as if to make himself more comfortable, a detail that Sam noted as unusual.  
A curious fact rose into the hunter's mind as he was about to leave. Where he slept with a gun under his pillow he'd never even seen Gadreel's blade to date. He probably had one, and he most likely did not need to keep it out any more than other angels in order to still be armed, but he looked so defenseless here that it caused Sam to feel vulnerable. If Sam felt vulnerable just watching him, he had to feel it himself, yet it appeared as if he'd simply opted to lower all his defenses despite the discomfort it caused and leave it up to trust that nothing would harm him here. There was a warhead hidden under the layers of the bunker: a man with a bloodthirst and a burning hatred for him, and Sam wasn't completely honest unless he admitted that this fact was part the reason he'd put that gun under his own pillow. Not to kill but to defend himself if the worst came to pass, and yet the sentry, the one who absolutely had a reason to believe Dean wanted him dead and who'd already been attacked once, left himself completely defenseless in this manner.

Suddenly, but not entirely unexpectedly, Sam noticed that the older was watching him.  
"Sorry," he automatically said, but the word dropped out calmly rather than anything, "I guess I'm keeping tabs on your location."

He could have sworn that Gadreel smiled at the notion. He himself would have wanted to deal punches if someone followed him around, but maybe the older acknowledged that this was inevitable. Despite Sam still standing there, he closed his eyes again, clearly judging him not a danger or a disturbance, as if he didn't mind the other's presence.  
Out of a whim, Sam decided not to leave.

"Can I talk with you for a second?" he asked instead.

The sentry opened his eyes again and looked at him briefly before nodding.  
"Of course."  
He dragged himself up from the bed, or at least into a half-sitting position: his shoulder leaned to the wall and his elbow to the bed's low end, and his (shoeless, Sam had to note - the pair sat right underneath the jacket) feet rested in near the same position as they'd been in before.

The younger made his way up to the bed and sat on the edge, not quite next to the other but close enough to show that he wasn't reserved about it. And he wasn't, not really, not as much as he just wanted to get the damn wild horse out of his head, even if he'd have to dig a hole to trap it in. It was so close he could almost reach up to it now.  
Instead of words, however, he had just the sound of their breathing. For the longest while, it was the only thing that they shared, one drawing breath as the other exhaled, taking time in that way but with no tension beyond that of expecting. Finally Sam had to face up to the fact he truly did not have a direct route to the escapist thought and he'd just need to pick up the closest tracks to follow.  
"Do you still believe you can be forgiven?"

The question seemed to both surprise and hurt the other. Sam watched him tense and his breath cut off for a moment until the vessel naturally returned to the rhythm. Then, slowly, Gadreel's eyes focused upon his again in the dim light cast from the corridor, and he shook his head.  
"No."

"But you're still doing what you think is right. Because it's right, or because you're hoping that you're wrong?"

Gadreel watched him, squinted, and finally looked away.  
"I cannot step aside anymore. I would not even if I could. I will try to make right what I can. I told you this before."

There it was. The horse. Sam reached for it and grabbed the mane of it only to find it unsatisfyingly coarse and cold like the heart of winter.  
"You don't think you'll live."  
No.  
"You won't even try."

They shared a look, and Sam realised he wasn't expecting an answer. He hadn't asked a question, after all. He'd simply stated a fact. It felt like it hollowed something inside him - this realisation, this conclusion, was what bothered him.  
"The other day," he started again, "you were dying on that field. And you were still scared when we got to you, thinking we'd - what? Kill you?"

"I do not fear death."

"So you feared that we'd capture you and torture you. Like Dean and I did before. Like the angels did before us. That's what you were running from when you fell, that's what you fear. And you know that tomorrow, when Castiel breaks the tablet, you'll be the one at front covering his escape. And that you'll likely die in the process - so that no one can get to you anymore. So that you've paid, right?"

"I will do what I have to," Gadreel said and the look on him was decisive, confident, but sad.  
He stood at a dead end that he could see no way out of, and suddenly, Sam laughed. It was a dry, short laughter, heavy with irony and frustration.

"That's exactly what Metatron wants."

"What?"

"You know, I was thinking when you said he controls everything. He promised to make you - what? A hero of his new Heaven? As a second-in-command, everyone would have to obey you, and with him as the new God, they'd have to look up to you and admire you just like him. And then he put you to murder them, and made damn sure no one would ever want to look you in the eye, that the very moment they'd get to you alone -"

From the look on the sentry's features as the older faced away Sam knew he'd come to the same conclusion, but that hearing it from another shamed him.  
"That's not your fault," the hunter heard himself say.  
"That's just Metatron. You know how Castiel knows him, right?"

Gadreel glanced at him, then stayed to look; he seemed curious, almost afraid.

"You don't, do you?" Sam sighed.  
"Cas - had a phase. He, uh, he decided to be the new God as well once. Well, it didn't end good for anyone, and long story short, he wanted to be forgiven too. He wanted to fix what he'd broken and apologise, so he - he went to Metatron. Metatron promised him that together, they would close Heaven and give the angels a chance to pull their crap together, to heal, and that he'd be the one who would save them all. Sound familiar? Well, next thing you know, Heaven is closed, yeah, but all of you are down here. Worse off than ever. Cas didn't mean for any of that to happen. He just wanted to help and a chance to forgive himself, to pay back for what he'd done. I don't think Metatron personally hated him or anything. He was just so easy to - he had so much guilt on him he was willing to do anything if only at the end it would serve the good cause."

"What are you trying to say?"

"That it's not you, Gadreel. It's Metatron. Everyone knows Cas didn't do it on purpose, just look at how many were still willing to follow him. He has his reputation, and you have the opposite. You're alone because Metatron wanted you to be. He probably made sure you'd have nowhere to go back to. He knew you'd never be welcome here again after Kevin, right? Did you have any other place to run, anyone else who could help you? Because I bet he made sure you wouldn't have that, either. And he probably threw in some - some candy for you inbetween there to make you think you weren't digging your own grave. And now you're sitting here thinking you're on a suicide mission tomorrow, for the greater good. That's exactly what he wants. That's what he prepared you for - so that when you're gone, he has one less enemy to watch for, one less angel who could definitely take him on."

The sentry wasn't just looking at him now, he was staring. He seemed to be fighting some inner battle, but Sam was certain of what he'd just poured out: it made so much sense it couldn't be an accident. The same thing with the same tricks by the same evil just didn't accidentally repeat itself.

A pained, frustrated and strangled sigh left the older. His remaining posture fell apart - a strange sight, as one of his defining characteristics was the perfect stance he never abandoned - and he looked away, seeming distressed.  
"He's getting back at me for his loss. He must blame me more than anyone. God was everything to him, and -"

"And you, uh, you're the reason He left, as far as Metatron cares, right."

The next look they shared had an uncanny undertone of perfect understanding to it, and Sam felt like they both were more than ready to screw the plan and walk in the scribe's office to ruin his records right away.

"So he's been writing me. This whole time, he was preparing me for this."

"He's damn good at getting inside people's heads," Sam grunted.  
He had a headache brewing, and a lot of paranoia to blame for it.  
"Does he seriously think he's writing a goddamn story with real people?"

"He's writing a play. The shortcomings are simply because he does not fit the title of the protagonist that he chose for himself. He wants to be that, but he's not well-received. No one likes him. I do not wonder why," Gadreel noted.  
Sam was surprised to see the spark in his eyes; he'd seemed so worn and so dull the whole time that seeing life in him was a shock to the younger. He was angry, but he was more than just that: he wasn't defeated anymore.

"So... I mean, I can't decide for you. But I won't lie, if you go ahead and play into that bullcrap, I'm going to hate you for it."  
The hunter smiled, as crooked and awkward as it was.  
"Don't die tomorrow. Prove that you're better than Metatron's writing."

 

* * *

 

 

Gadreel didn't catch himself early enough to stop his hand from reaching out and grabbing Sam Winchester's arm as the man attempted to stand up. His hold loosened immediately, but the younger's weight had already returned upon the bed, and the questioning look on him wasn't offended, it was curious but reserved.  
"You want me to live?" Gadreel asked, as if the talk had left something unclear.

Sam nodded.  
"Yeah. Yeah, I want you to live."  
He sighed and shrugged, leaning back upon his hands and raising his eyes to the ceiling.  
"Two months ago I was out to kill you, but it's different now. I think I realised that my problem wasn't just you back when Dean almost killed you and it didn't make me feel better at all. I think I understood that I can't hold you responsible for everyone else just because it's convenient. I still hated you, or at least I wanted to because looking at it differently was just too much, but then you showed up here and - God, my _brother's_ a problem. I guess I heard what you said and I knew what you meant. Besides."  
There was a moment's silence during which the sentry didn't know if Sam was going to continue, or if his mind could even process what the other had already said. He felt dizzier than he'd felt waking up.  
"It's not every day you see an angel tear up. You're goddamn stoic, and that's to put it lightly. I mean, I don't know if anyone else was looking, but I think that was - that was the point I decided that it wasn't up to me and my personal drive for vengeance to judge who you are. That based on what I know, I just couldn't judge you, because I had no idea what was going on with you. And it definitely wasn't up to Dean to make that decision either. I think Cas agrees with me. Has anyone ever listened to your side of anything, or did they just dig in for the pleasure of it? That's - what I've been thinking. I never actually stopped to ask why you did what you did. I just heard what others wanted me to think, and... that seems to be a pattern with you. So I'm here."

The sentry sat still and barely dared to breathe. No one had ever shown him such an enormous amount of compassion, and he'd never thought to expect it - least of all from Sam, who should have by all means still hated him: he had all the reasons to.

"Of course," the younger added quietly, "that doesn't undo anything. You still screwed me over, you still murdered an innocent, you still did what you did under Metatron. You're one hundred percent guilty as charged on all accounts. And maybe you deserve to die. I'm just saying that if so, then - then so do I. We all do. Because you're right. We've all made mistakes. Some of them... we made the conscious choice for. I've chosen to murder, I've chosen to betray, and I've - I regret most of it, but some I just don't. Yet I get to live. So why wouldn't you? Just because you don't have a brother who'd kill for you, who'd do anything for you, and friends who'd stick by your side to fight their own family? Does that make me better than you, or just lucky?"

What was he supposed to say to that? To any of it?  
Gadreel had nothing; he couldn't agree, but he couldn't disagree either. Sam seemed to lay out just the barebone facts and remained so kind through it all that attempting to express how he felt about any of it just felt pointless and even rude. So he said nothing, and he felt like even looking at Sam was edging disrespect but his eyes seemed glued to the other despite that. He couldn't look away. And then, while he'd been distracted, a sudden weight crossed his cheek. It took him a moment to realise it was a tear - a plain human expression hardly beginning to show what he felt. He didn't wipe it off. The presence of it only served to add to his stunned confusion.  
Sam's lips curved to a quick smile and he looked away: it was a quick turn with an apologetic kind of a half-grimace, one more expression of empathy that Gadreel felt vastly undeserving of. No, it wasn't just that; he was completely, utterly unprepared to react to it. He'd never felt it before. He'd never been offered something that meant so much to him, that gave him exactly all the things he'd needed, when he'd neither dared to ask for it nor had he expected it.

"Lucifer," he heard himself utter in a colourless voice, "wanted to prove to God that men weren't as good as He believed. That they were not worth his respect or God's love. But Lucifer was wrong. You are good. No one is more deserving; nothing is more worth protecting."

Sam looked at him, quietly, eyes wide for a moment's time until the surprise passed and was replaced by a frown and a squint as he kept looking at Gadreel, most likely trying to tie up what he'd heard to what he'd said but failing to find the proper connection. There was none - the rest was as locked within the sentry's mind as it had been before, invisible to the man he'd shared the conclusion with.

"Why'd you let him through?" the younger asked anxiously, his voice showing he knew he was treading a subject that he had no business prying into, but Gadreel had opened that door for him, and the angel realised he didn't truly mind.

"Because I loved you, and I thought he loved you the same. He had the words to make me hear exactly what I wanted, yet he never lied. He claimed that you were imprisoned, kept from your true purpose, and that God thought you too weak to let your true potential come to fulfillment. That we would set you free to be who you were destined to be - give you the opportunity, the freedom to be everything you could, and show God that He was wrong to keep you in chains. I loved God, Sam, but I always loved humanity more. I loved you for what I'd seen and for the potential I knew, just as Lucifer did, to reside inside you. But where I saw the potential for greatness - for culture, for growth - Lucifer saw the potential for hatred that would take root in uncertainty, and he foresaw that the fear of the unknown would feed that spark into flames. He predicted the wars, the destruction and thought God was blind to this, and that if he only had the chance to prove God that His most cherished creation was corrupt, he would make God love us more than God loved you. Because Lucifer couldn't understand Him - in Lucifer's eyes the angels were perfect, better than men in all aspects. We were flawless, obedient, and we loved Him unquestioningly, and unlike humanity that could choose to abandon Him, we deserved to be His most beloved in turn for our unconditional adoration. He knew that you were my weakness like he thought you were God's, and so God left us, because in truth it was us who did not deserve His love - it was us who were traitorous, self-centered and imperfect, not humanity."

A silence followed as Sam processed the story; the sentry sat still and stiff, fear growing in his core as always to wait for rejection and perhaps anger or mockery that so often had followed his words when he'd spoken what he knew to be the truth. He'd never meant to do any harm, and if he would have known what Lucifer truly wanted, he would have refused him entry and done everything in his power to make sure the archangel would never land a foot closer to humanity than the very edge of Gadreel's vision, but he'd learned all of this too late. Since then he'd been the sole target for his brothers and sisters to pour out their fear and anger and their grief, so they'd refused to hear him out, and those stories spun in desperation had became the only accepted truth - any other version, especially Gadreel's own, was blasphemy and slander.  
He'd made his own existence much more miserable by never bending to the official propaganda, but even when everyone else had forgotten, he'd still remembered who he was, and he was not the angel the name Gadreel was now tied to. They'd taken his identity and history to create a legend, a monster that had nothing in common with the sentry himself, and he'd had no choice but to accept all the hatred it bred upon himself, suffering the torment in its stead, but he'd never made the mistake of thinking himself the beast.

Sam's eyes were upon him, but it took him a while to notice the younger looking. When he did, the expression in the golden green surprised him; it didn't seem disgusted or even disappointed. It seemed open and for once lacking the caution Gadreel had come to associate with it, as if something had changed between them, allowing the younger to risk trusting him for the first time.  
"So what did you do?" the man asked him curiously.

"I let him enter. I let him in."

"And that's - that's everything?"

Gadreel tilted his head, surprised and suspicious. Then, slowly, he nodded.  
"I failed to protect the Garden," he said and the words still stung like a thousand needles piercing him through, "I failed God and I failed humanity, and I caused all of the suffering - all of what you've been through leads back to my mistake. That is all. Had I done more, I would not beg for a chance to redeem myself; if I'd done more, I would have climbed right back into my prison the very moment the spell set me free, for I would not stand to see myself walk amongst you again. I made a mistake. I was charged with a crime that was not my doing."

"I thought you - I thought you at least took part or something."  
Sam huffed, then chuckled and rubbed at the back of his neck in a sign of bafflement.  
"Wow."

His reaction didn't make any sense - especially not in context to how everyone else in history had reacted to it. Gadreel watched him, having suddenly adopted the caution Sam had dropped, and made himself expect the younger to pull out a hidden blade and run him through with it, but nothing of the kind happened. Instead Sam turned to look at him again.  
"I need to mull this over a bit," the hunter said with a grimace, "Sorry for waking you up for it."

The older shook his head carefully.  
"I'm glad that you did."


	6. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The bottom line is that we never fall for the person we're supposed to.”_  
>  ― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

* * *

 

The comfort shed slowly. It was unfair; unfair that Sam couldn't get that feeling from someone else, someone who didn't remind him of the worst he'd been through, but he understood well why. No one else had seen him that way - no one else had experienced the things he had. The times had been different for Gadreel, of course. The timeline was, however, the only thing that truly differed. And Sam, as he stood under the shower's water, couldn't chase away the relief that he felt at finally not being alone. The whole way in he'd tried to deny it, tell himself they weren't so similar, but he was wrong and he was lying and he hated it and he loved it at once.  
Earlier - a week or some days, he realised he'd lost the exact numbers counting the time since - Castiel had asked him what he'd felt when Gadreel had possessed him. He'd been honest, but he'd also been reserved: no, he hadn't felt threatened. The truth went deeper than that, to things he simply did not wish to share with anyone and which he hardly dared to admit to himself: he'd felt cared for. It shamed him still, so of course he'd only implied as much, but he'd felt like there was nothing he had to fear, even when he had everything to fear. It had caused him to worry occasionally if his emotional response had broken - finally - when things affected him less than they had done before: when he could push himself and not feel the burn, stand in the face of death and just not worry about it too much. He'd kept getting in danger, perhaps out of carelessness, and he'd always survived; he'd never really questioned it. He'd felt like all that time, someone was holding a shield for him, ready and willing to protect him, and he'd given in to that feeling.  
In the evenings, even when he'd stood in the cold, he'd felt warm, secure, comfortable. He'd been tired, constantly, and sometimes the blackouts worried him, but that seemed to be the only time when he'd truly worried of anything. At those times, he'd almost known, he'd come so close to uncovering the truth, but then he'd stopped - he remembered, multiple times, simply ceasing to dig. The closer he'd gotten the more he'd itched to go further, but Gadreel had hidden himself well, and somehow... perhaps Sam just hadn't wanted him out enough when his conscious mind wasn't yet in on the secret. Perhaps he'd subconsciously preferred the feeling of never having to be alone against the world. Perhaps he'd liked it.

_Perhaps he'd liked it._

The ceiling light dimmed, made a small sound and popped. Sam raised his eyes in the dark, water still flowing down his body from the invisible source, and sighed. He turned the shower off and patted his way, dripping wet, across the room to the towel, wrapped it around himself and opened the door. For a second - enough to draw breath and let out the first exhale - he thought of yelling for Dean to bring a new bulb, but... Dean wasn't there. Dean couldn't bring him anything.  
And neither would Castiel; they'd wished each other a good night as the seraph had descended the stairs and Sam had ascended them, one heading to prepare the other's brother for the upcoming fight and one simply wishing to take a long hot shower.  
Somehow Sam doubted Gadreel would know what to bring him if he'd asked, but he wouldn't; right now, the last thing he wanted was to ask Gadreel for anything, even if it was nothing more than a replacement for the light in the bathroom.

So he retreated back into the shower, huffing, and sought out the flashlight application on his phone: he pointed the pale ray of light towards the ceiling and in the dim, blue-grey glow of it headed back under the water.

When he emerged eight minutes later, the phone's battery was almost dead but at least he felt less filthy as he'd done before. Inside was a different deal. The thoughts he'd had still lingered as stubborn and he wondered whether his plans to sleep through the night would fail him now because of them. Once back in his room the first thing he did was to put on the same pair of pants as he'd worn the other night, and then he hooked up his phone to the charger and wandered off to find a bulb for the lamp in the bathroom. He didn't change it - who knew if he'd be back tomorrow to enjoy the luxury - but instead left it sitting on the sink to wait for a better time, knowing that even if they'd find themselves alive but bloody and in need of a long shower tomorrow as had more than often happened before, there were the downstairs bathrooms with proper tubs in them to sink into. No one would urgently need this one, not until they had time to switch the damn light, and today... today just wasn't a good day.  
Upon re-entering his room Sam felt like he was almost ready for whatever would come. He locked the door and threw himself on the bed, hair still wet enough for the water to seep into the pillow he'd landed on.

It was the moment that he closed his eyes, pretending to give into sleep despite the light still shining above him, that he realised there wasn't just a single wild horse in him but rather a whole herd of them, and each one that he'd not yet captured was charging restlessly around just barely out of his reach.

 

* * *

 

The knock on the door was almost apologetic.  
It woke Sam up, even if he hadn't strictly speaking fallen asleep yet: he opened his eyes and realised that he'd trusted himself to not fall asleep so fully that he hadn't even set up the alarm. With a grunt he lifted his body from the bed and walked to the door, hand running through his moist hair and his equally moist shoulders, suddenly longing for the warmth of the towel that he'd dropped on the bed upon standing up.  
He'd not yet thought about much when he unlocked the door and pulled it ajar, but he sure thought a lot when he unexpectedly came face to face with Gadreel.

The older seemed lost in the same way that a young child would get lost in a mall. He stood in the corridor, barely daring to look Sam in the eye but at the same time appearing as if he knew quite well what he'd come for, and - maybe it was the half-waking state Sam was in, but the angel was a welcome sight in his eyes. The brief moment for which he'd drifted to the untreaded midfield between the waking world and that of sleep seemed to have killed the conflict inside him, and instead the only thing he could register now was that tonight was the final night before a battle - before he headed off to it with a brother he no longer knew - and he welcomed the presence of a friend to share that with.

"Yeah?" he prompted, still in the dark as to why he'd been sought out for audience.

"May I be honest with you?" the older asked in turn, half a smile on him.

"Sure."

"The silence unsettles me. Castiel has yet to come back and I cannot go to him; I was wondering if I could spend some time with you to chase it off."

Sam's lips parted and he drew a quiet breath in through them; of course. The bunker was still stone walls and the silence of the grave when it came to night time and wandering it alone.  
"Yeah, sure, come in."  
He stepped aside and drew the door open with him. Gadreel crossed the threshold like a vampire from a story, relief at having been invited in flushing over him but at the same time facing the nervousness over what would happen next. His eyes ran by the walls and furniture of the room and Sam noted a near-nostalgic sort of fondness in his expression. As he was looking, the angel noticed him watching and turned to look at him, now smiling properly and warmly.

"I wanted to thank you," he said unexpectedly.

Sam raised his brows as he reached to push the door closed behind them.  
"Okay?"

"For taking the time to listen to me earlier, but for the rest just the same. I do not deserve your forgiveness, yet - you may well be the only one who's made me feel welcome."

The younger felt the corners of his mouth twitching.  
"I'm sure Cas doesn't mind you here either," he noted, taking an odd step and then another in the direction of the couch, "but I guess that's different than feeling welcome."

Gadreel nodded, following him with his gaze but not so much with his feet. Sam dropped on the couch and pulled his feet upon it as well; the floor was cold and he wasn't wearing socks, not to bed if he only could avoid doing so. He wrapped his arms around his legs and smiled a crooked smile.

"Sometimes I forget you guys aren't exactly people, you know?" he chuckled, "But then I watch you stand there in the middle of the room with the thought of maybe sitting down or getting comfortable never even crossing your mind and it's pretty obvious."

The words prompted a brief squint from Gadreel towards his direction, then a glance around the room. Sam hadn't left him much choice; either take the bed and sit within a polite distance or take the couch and sit on his feet.  
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the older seemed to judge the bed ultimately less awkward for them both and sat on the edge of it. It didn't make him look any more comfortable or relaxed, but at least it provided Sam the illusion.

"I have a question," Sam started after reflecting upon the fact for a moment, "about the time you were possessing me."  
It wasn't a subject he wanted to talk about, but this was something that had bothered him and continued to do so to the very moment, and if he'd indeed die tomorrow, then he'd rather go down knowing.  
"How much did you - see?"

"If you are asking how much attention I paid to what you were doing when you were not fighting, not much. I was not listening in on your conversations and I did my best to stay out of your thoughts as well."

"Uh, yeah."  
A silence.  
"I know you're lying."

The older seemed embarrassed enough.

"Look, I know you're saying that to make me feel better. It doesn't. I just want to know how bad it really was, because even though I - think I know, it just - I want to hear it from you."

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"I know."

Another silence. Then, after it had stretched, Gadreel turned towards the black screen of the television - Sam realised he could probably see him in the reflection without looking directly at him, and out of spite, he turned his own eyes to make contact through the surface.  
After a moment that felt like the check before checkmate, he smiled defeatedly. Sam felt the corner of his mouth responding, half-victorious, half-apologetic. He wasn't dropping this one.

"Everything. I - saw everything," the older finally admitted.

Sam nodded. He'd known already. That was where the biggest discomfort rose from. Yet, in a way, he felt easier now that he'd had confirmation.  
"Good that you're caught up with Game of Thrones, then."  
His stomach felt bottomless and yet still somehow full of contents he disliked.  
"Also good to know that I've -"  
The laughter he let out was pained, and he pressed his head down upon his knees just to breathe for a while. When he sat there like that, curled up behind the walls of his flesh and bone, he heard the older stand up: the lights flickered off, leaving behind just the lamp on the bedside table, and for a moment he was sure he'd made the angel feel unwelcome enough to leave. Then, instead of hearing the door, he felt the other's weight pull down the other end of the couch. Gadreel was shifting and Sam had no idea what he was doing before he felt his feet brush against his on the couch and realised he'd taken off his shoes to sit in the same pose as Sam was sitting, only not with his head down, and soon with one hand pressing upon Sam's shoulder.

"That," he spoke in a soft, low voice that Sam had never heard before, "you don't have to forgive."

"I feel like shit."  
Another tortured laughter fell off into the scarce space between Sam's mouth, his stomach and his thighs.  
"You have no idea what it feels like."

"No. I don't."

Finally, slowly, Sam raised his head again. He watched the older for a while, seeing a dim reflection of his own pain in the other and then things that he couldn't tell apart clearly enough to call them anything, and his heart that had ached a minute ago calmed down a little as if growing tired of trying to strangle itself.  
Sam wanted to say something - anything - but there really wasn't much left. There was that scream that he wanted to let out and the primal urge to just launch at the other (specifically, to bite the side of his neck long enough for blood to come out, but that was as pointless as the idea was distantly amusing) but most of all, just a vast silence where communication belonged.

"I don't know if it's of any help," the angel said after a while when Sam had gotten stuck just staring at that specific spot on his neck wondering how long it would take for the animal to evolve out of man, or if it ever would, "but I am an angel. The things a human does are - I did not think much of any of it."

"I think I'm going to throw up."  
He wasn't about to, but he sure felt like it.  
After another moment of silence, Sam leaned back until his spine was curving around the arm rest.  
"It's funny, actually. That's half the reason I wanted to kill you. The other half was just Kevin, but you know, I wanted to take the witness out. I don't want anyone to know me like that. What I think, how I feel, how weak I really am, what I do when I'm alone. That's nobody's business."

"You are not weak."

"Last time I checked, my insides reeked of shame and weakness, but hey - nice try."

A frustrated breath left the angel and the sound of it combined with the annoyed expression on him was well worth recalling the memory for in Sam's mind. He found himself with a small, crooked smile even as his chest felt like it was about to collapse in on itself.

"I was tied to a chair about to be tortured, and I thought you the surest way out. Nothing I said was true," Gadreel said in a tone that resembled a growl and echoed with the voice he'd used in that specific situation, "You know this as well as I do."

"Yeah. I just wanted to see how you'd react."  
The next chuckle Sam let out was light, almost relaxed.  
"I don't know, man. It's not like - nothing I say or do will take it back. Nothing you say or do will take it back. So I just need to live with it and sometimes, sometimes I feel I don't care. Right now and a lot of the time in general, I just - I want to set myself on fire to get that out of me."  
He realised he hadn't noticed when the older's hand had left his shoulder, but the spot it had touched now seemed to burn like his hand had burned the evening before when Gadreel had touched it. A shiver crossed Sam's body and he leaned over again, hiding his head once more to give himself that small, warm space he could use to breathe in used air.

"I never meant to hurt you."  
There was strain in the older's voice, a sense of weakness, fragility.

"I'm not even angry at you."  
The shudder that ran through Sam next could have as well been a gag and he wasn't certain if it wasn't.  
"You're an angel. You have no freaking clue. You've never had a body. I don't care -"  
He lifted his head and stared right into the older's eyes, making sure he was hearing it.  
"- I don't care if you love humanity or you've been watching us for forever, you just can't know how it feels like to be one if you've never been one and experienced the - just felt this and had to face with the fact that your flesh is you, all that you are, because we don't feel like we're a spirit and a body separatedly, it's just all that there is. You can't know how it feels like to have someone else inside you, controlling you against your will, just - just using you, whatever the reason, like you were disposable, like you were an object, just something to take and - and - God. But my brother does. My - Christ, Dean is human. Dean is the one who let you in in the first place. I can live with you but how the hell can I live with that? Knowing that he's willing to sacrifice what isn't even his and refuses to - I - how can I hate him for wanting me to live? I can't forgive him either. Not while I feel like this. Not ever, I don't know."

He'd stopped looking a while ago but didn't even remember what Gadreel had looked like when he'd last checked. It didn't matter. Just getting it out was at once embarrassing, painful and so goddamn relieving he would have done it twice just to feel that way again. This was something he couldn't say to Dean directly nor could he tell it to Castiel, but what did he have to lose with Gadreel? What didn't the angel already know about him? It was like talking to a mirror - it knew everything about him and could do precisely nothing to help him beyond sitting there still and quiet just taking what he had to throw at it.

Then, the weight in front of him shifted. He had a hand on his both shoulders, and when he looked, the older was right there, still looking at him as he'd looked before, and somehow he didn't seem quite human; he seemed, felt, like an entity, and it forced the air out of Sam's lungs.  
There was a request in the touch and Sam didn't know if he wanted to say yes, but he did, and he relaxed to the touch and closed his eyes, nodding. In a moment - one tilt, some gentle guiding - his face was pressed against the rough, warm metallic zipper and the completely soft fabric surrounding it, against the warmth of the flesh below and he found himself readjusting, breaking apart the defensive curl to fit over Gadreel's. It was idiotic - his hands gripped the sides of the hoodie he was leaning onto, grew tired of the leather pushing in the way and he struggled to freedom only to tear blindly at the jacket until it had fallen out of his way and then, completely void of thought, he collapsed onto the other again and pushed him against the arm rest of the couch to make him more comfortable to rest on top of. He'd forced the older's leg down from the couch and somehow settled in the space created between them, head on the male's chest and the other's arms around his body just resting lightly over his back as his own held on tight like he was about to fall off, and if he'd ever felt more desperate and comforted at once, then he sure as hell couldn't remember.  
He breathed in the scent that was an earthy combination of leather, close contact with new fleece cloth and the strange-yet-familiar, unique scent of - was it the vessel or the angel? Sam had no idea, he didn't care, and the less he thought of it the more comfortable he'd be right there.

"I don't want to feel like this."  
He was staring at the black cloth and some fold or another of the jacket that they were now both lying on top of.  
"I want to hate you and I don't want to hate my brother."  
He could feel as much as hear the heartbeat somewhere underneath his head, and the sound was faster than he'd expected, almost scared. Slowly he closed his eyes and tried to will the beat into calming down.  
"But I'm afraid of him and I'm not afraid of you. I owe you nothing and I owe him everything, but I can't help him and I can help you."  
A quiet chuckle ended with a deep inhale, and after a moment, Sam found himself readjusting. He opened his eyes to look at the sentry, and Gadreel was surely enough looking back at him. He lost his breath and closed his eyes again, suddenly full of adrenaline, feeling like falling.  
"I think you should go," he said, lips rubbing against the goddamn zipper.  
"Like right now."  
And yet he made no effort to move, to let the other out, and he knew for certain Gadreel would be going nowhere as long as it required him to push Sam anywhere. It hurt him, the fact that after all this the only being Sam could trust to respect him beyond the line of reason was the one that had violated his consent the worst.  
"I wish I was drunk."  
The monologue was starting to bother him but there really wasn't anything the angel could have said to it. The feeling kept growing until it frustrated Sam and made him look for some way out of it - first words that could lead to an actual conversation, then actions that would shatter the continuation.

What he found were his hands gripping the cloth over the other's shoulders, elbows digging into the side of the couch and something that was a mixture of the inside of a leather jacket and the side of the arm rest right next to Gadreel's shoulder, and his face, somehow, was so close he could feel the other's breath softly hitting his skin, his cheek, and -  
 _God. God. What the fuck am I doing?_  
\- his lips tasted fresh like water and the thin skin covering them was soft like any Sam had kissed in his life. And he wasn't stopping, either - he pressed the male down like fearing he'd escape, and his mind was a complete, utter chaos as his lips moved over the ones that in turn had no idea how to meet his.  
The only thing he had the courage to register was the warm weight of the older's hand upon the back of his head, fingers caressing his neck as if to tell him it was alright, or that he still existed, that this wasn't the world breaking apart even if it felt like it. The kiss tasted of salt and there was water in it, but that was the only recognition Sam had for the fact that he was crying, and he didn't want to know if it was out of fear or if it was shame or regret or something else entirely. He just wanted to drown, and to drown he tried.


	7. To Want

* * *

 

  
"I'm sorry."  
The man's breathing was heavy and cut often, irregularly, like he was gasping for air after being submerged in water for much longer than was comfortable for him.  
"God, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what the hell - I'm sorry, I'm -"

It went on forever. Gadreel held him, unsure what else to do, against his body - his hand was pressed against the back of Sam's head as it had been the whole time, but now they were sitting upright instead of the leaning pose they'd assumed earlier. Sam had pulled up and nearly left the couch only to fall back and grip onto him again, and he'd gone with it, as the whole of the situation seemed overwhelming to them both. In the midst of it, somehow, Gadreel felt calmer than he'd been before. The burning ache inside him was as good as gone, the crushing guilt and regret had turned to peace instead as he tried to reflect that upon the younger. His mouth tingled, lips numb, and some distant part of him was embarrassed that he'd had no idea how to react; it seemed disrespectful, unkind.

"It's alright."

"What the fuck? No, it's not -"  
A wavering, long inhale cut off Sam's own sentence.  
"What the hell? What the hell. I'm so sorry."

"Sam."

"Goddamnit."

"Sam."  
Finally, he had eye contact. The younger's expression was terrified and lost and he still had tears on his face, but the longer he looked, the calmer he seemed to get. The shock lifted, but it was replaced by anger aimed at the man himself, and finally he let out a long, exasperated sigh.

"I don't know what the hell went into me," the younger growled, turning away again.  
Something flared inside the angel and he let out a sharp, equally frustrated sigh and slid his palm over the man's jaw instead to turn him, as suggestive as it was as opposed to the forceful nature of the gesture itself, to look back at him. Then he let his hand fall down on Sam's shoulder instead, away from the area that he wasn't certain if he had permission to touch. They watched one another in some passive battle of wills, like snarling animals, until something suddenly changed in Sam's expression. He fell pale and, after a moment's cessation, wiped his face clean and stood up to walk a circle in the room before stopping and lifting his face towards the ceiling.  
He let out a dry, short laughter and brushed his hands over his face.  
"God, I'm an idiot."

This monologue seemed to never end: it had started before the incident and it still continued, as Gadreel hadn't yet managed to figure out the reasoning behind it.

"I just - you were there and I needed to, you know? I just realised - I - God, Gadreel, that was probably the - I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."  
These apologies, while they did come with a weight in pleading, did not carry the tone of fear that the previous ones had embodied.  
"I mean - hell, I have no idea how to put it so that it doesn't sound awful - but I just - you're an angel. You've - you've probably never been - that was really, really offlimits, and I don't know what to say to make that right."

Whatever he was getting at, Gadreel couldn't deny it. No, he'd never been kissed before. He'd never experienced anything like what had just happened. It was the opposite of the way he was used to being touched and he didn't even have words for it. Yet, unlike Sam seemed to assume, he didn't feel violated, and even if he had, what was that in comparison to how he'd made the man himself feel?  
Nothing about it made any sense.

"I am fine, calm down."  
Was he in any place to tell Sam what to do? Still, the younger seemed to at least try; he stopped pacing again, brought his hands through his freshly-washed hair and pushed the stray strands behind his ears. His fingertips stayed to hold them back and down and he did try to breathe, cheeks flushed and chest rising and falling fast but slower still by the moment.

"But I'm right, aren't I?" he finally asked, "Until now you've had that safe space you've kept around you and I've respected that and the only time people have gone through it has been to carve you up, and - and now I just pushed right past and did that. That's not okay. That's - that's the opposite of okay."

"I'm fine, Sam."  
And he meant it: he was fine. He was perfectly fine. Nothing in him hurt.  
"Sit down. Please."  
Did it mean something to him? Sam expected it to - expected that he'd broken something, some invisible law, injured him, violated him, but he hadn't. Yes, it meant something to him. What exactly, he had no idea.

The younger, hesitantly, did sit down again. He was watching Gadreel carefully yet without reservation, and in the warm light of the reading light beside his bed the blush on his skin would have been left unnoticed by any entity that could not read directly into the physical responses his body had. That wasn't something Gadreel could turn off - no angel could. It was like vision to an owl, an extra sense to warmth, pulse, the fluctuations in hormones, everything.  
What he sensed now about the other was a chaos of mixed signals much like what he perceived with the senses of the vessel alone, and he was smiling at the whole of it.

"What? Stop."

"You overreact."

"I don't. Jesus Christ."  
Sam drew in a long breath and shuddered.

"I am not harmed. You seem to expect me to be."

"Seriously? I kind of expected you to stab me."

"Didn't even cross my mind."

Now Sam smiled as well, as fleeting as the expression was.  
"Oh, God," he muttered again, rubbing his face with both hands, "I'm not even drunk. I know I said I wish I was but now I - I really wish I was a hundred percent more sober than I feel."

"You did nothing wrong," Gadreel reminded him, brow lifting.

"C'mon. That - seriously?"

The angel nodded, hoping the repetition would eventually get through whatever it was that kept Sam so certain he'd screwed up.

"You're actually not kidding. You didn't mind it."

"I did not mind it."

"Wow, I - I'm really, really sorry."

"Stop apologising."

"I'm -"  
Sam swallowed the last word. Then he laughed and shook his head.  
"I keep repeating that, don't I."

"You've said it so many times I lost count," the angel replied with half a smile although it wasn't entirely true, "I forgive you, if that is what you are looking for - but you are apologising for something that does not require my forgiveness. You did not hurt me. I am fine."  
Gadreel watched the other's struggle with a sense of dissociation, at once feeling slightly at loss but connected and comfortable more than anything. He felt safe and strangely accepted, like the barrier that had built between them had just been shattered with a single forceful blow.

Now that Sam had finally moved past the initial shock, the hunter was watching him with growing curiosity; he seemed to be playing with thoughts, picking and choosing whether to share any of them.  
"You liked it," he finally stated, disbelieving, "You actually liked it, didn't you."

"I did not mind it."

"Holy crap."  
The younger laughed; he seemed so relieved that it prompted the older to tilt his head and aim a disbelieving, baffled look at him.  
"You freaking liked it. I - I don't even know what to say to that. I'm - glad, I guess. I thought you hated it. I thought you'd hate it and I only realised that, like, midway through."

They both stopped, all interaction ceasing to make way for watching instead; Sam's eyes kept moving between Gadreel's while the angel merely watched in stillness, his vision granting him a much wider focus with no reason to choose a particular center of attention in order to see what he wanted to.  
As he watched, the younger brought the tip of his tongue across his lips, pupils dilating as if the level of light had changed. His lips never closed again, staying parted to let out a careful breath, and his scent changed ever so slightly to a deeper tone that carried as much information in it as the rest of him. He was probably unaware of all of this and Gadreel waited for him to pick up, to make a decision, and as seconds passed him, he slowly grew aware of his own participation in the present moment. He _was_ there. That was something he hadn't quite grasped until then: he was _there_ and this was happening, whatever it was, and wherever it was leading. Just like the moments before this had happened - it didn't seem to fully register to him, all of it too new and something he'd never imagined himself in. Besides, the situation had effortlessly crossed him from his own realm, the separate world, into Sam's instead; there was a conflict between them, a sort of a hesitant merging of two very different realities.

After what seemed like a brief cessation of the flow of time itself, Sam drew a shaky breath and leaned in again. The tip of his nose brushed against Gadreel's and quite instinctively the older parted his lips in expectation; the touch came soon enough, now without the force and fire it had struck him as before, and the difference in the same act was surprising to him. He'd expected that it would be the same and he'd prepared for that, but this was entirely new as an experience for him again, and once more he felt at loss as to how to react to it.  
The younger had closed his eyes again, and to mirror that, so did Gadreel, desperately hoping it would grant him enlightenment, some sort of a revelation, as to what to do next. In a way it did - it opened to him an opportunity to forget about the irrelevant flow of information that blocked his senses so that he could simply concentrate on what really mattered: the brush of the younger's lips against his, the gentle hold of them, the sliding of them across only to lift again and grip his skin from another place. The first movement he made in response felt at once freeing and entirely crude and clumsy, yet it was nothing but the finest shift of his jaw: he opened his mouth half an inch more, then forgot it that way, heart racing inside the vessel like he was being threatened with a blade and it took him a conscious reminder to continue breathing, even if he wasn't entirely sure how to do it with the main part of his mouth preoccupied and his nose pointing directly against Sam's.  
Then, when that was settled - it took much less time in the real world than it seemed to take in his mind - he could finally engage the rest of him, and his grace loosened its grip over the flesh to allow instinct some room. A soft sound left Sam at his response; some of the earlier fire sparked in the younger's movements and he pushed closer, arms wounding up against Gadreel's sides as he leaned to his hands and the couch.

The kiss was prolonged, slow, each movement careful and learning - not just for the angel but for the human as well, like he'd never kissed anyone in this manner before. His movements were smooth and knowing, however, heading for the parts where he was unsure and taking some hidden information from the way he moved and how Gadreel responded to that in turn. Unlike the older had initially expected, the whole of it didn't suffer from his shy input, and he wasn't quite as hopelessly lost as he'd thought he'd be even though he'd almost been too ashamed to give it a try. The kiss was gentle enough to allow him the space to relax and forget himself into it, each touch lingering, like a hand gripping another to show it the shape of flowing water, exploring something untouchable yet understandable, invisible but easy to recognise.  
Even when the younger moved over him, hips landing over his thighs for perhaps balance or proximity alone, the new angle didn't present much issue; they continued, and continued, and the gasps of breath inbetween somehow grew heavy and strained the longer it went on yet neither seemed to want to stop.  
Gadreel's skin went numb as certainly as it had before as the repetitive brushing and touching overloaded the nerves, but it didn't happen near as quickly this time. When it finally was beyond salvaging they parted, Sam's forehead pressing against the angel's with their heads bowed before the flood of experience, balancing over fear, excitement and some strange relief like this was something that had been brewing for the longest time without either of them noticing.

"Liked that too?" the younger asked, voice broken and hoarse like he'd strained it too much, and then he topped the sentence with a hybrid of a breathless sigh and a chuckle.

Gadreel couldn't answer him: the sensation was beyond any experience he had words for. Instead he simply nodded and held onto Sam tighter for a moment as if to shelter him from the air that moved sluggishly around them, to keep him there, to keep him safe, to make sure he didn't disappear, or to ensure that all of this stayed just the way it was for them - that all of it remained.

 

* * *

 

Sam didn't know where to stop anymore. He moved from resting his head against the other's to brushing their cheeks together and stayed there with the angel's breath in his ear, each exhale causing his body to tense, his stomach to jump or his own breath to release suddenly against his will, and he smiled and his lips trembled and his world swayed and his blood pooled heavy in his veins as if it had ceased flowing, waiting for orders, something to guide or break the moment. He drew a line from the male's cheekbone to the bottom of his ear, pressed his lips over the other's neck and tasted him - not half as violent as he'd wanted what seemed like an eternity ago, but rather just dragging his lips across the skin, the trimmed hair prickling against his mouth whenever he came too close to the jaw and then bending like silk against his own facial hair when he moved towards the back and found the hairline instead. He allowed the tip of his tongue to map out the texture but withdrew it at tension in the older's body; it had been an invasive, opportunistic tryout that he didn't regret but didn't mind giving up on either.

He seemed now to be as certain of wanting to be here, just like this, as he still was of what he'd spoken earlier: it appeared to be a paradox, how he'd never wanted Gadreel close but now wanted to keep him right here just like this, but there was a fundamental difference between the two things. Two if he went to detail about existing against and existing inside, a blurred line as he returned to kiss the other for the third time and dared to offer his tongue into it this time, but more than anything there was a difference between wanting and forcing. There was nothing about this that he didn't want, and he only took what he knew he had the permission for, even if he lacked the words to ask. These things didn't seem like something that the angel had the words to express, or the knowledge by which to commit to those words. Instead Sam tried to never push anything but offered what he felt would naturally follow, and if the older seemed to agree with his idea, he went with it, and if he didn't - if he tensed, jumped or expressed any sign of doubt - Sam stopped and went for something else.

Strangely, Sam never noticed his hips moving above the older's before he started listening to his own heavy breathing and realised he was beyond aroused; the stillness, slowness of them had lulled him into a state where none of that had mattered. It was strange and unexpected, but once he was aware of it he couldn't ignore it anymore, and after figuring out for a moment what he really wanted, he lifted his fingers from the other's body and slid back to his own side of the couch. He wasn't scared anymore, nor was he shocked or conflicted about anything as he thought he would be. The only thing that made him uneasy was the realisation that this was something he was capable of, but it wasn't a world-changing thing - rather it was a minor discovery that in the larger scale of things didn't matter much. Gadreel was the first male-bodied anything he'd experienced attraction towards, and as far as he knew, he could just as well be the last. For some reason this simply did not rock his world at all, merely tilted it like the mirror surface of a vast ocean turning to slow tides.

Still, once his breathing had settled to an acceptable pace, he reached to the angel again and undid the zipper that had constantly scratched him through the whole thing, and Gadreel let him do it although he seemed conflicted at the development. Sam cast an empty look at him and, as casually as he could, pushed off the cloth from his shoulders and arms to reveal the lighter shirt from underneath.  
"I can't believe you can wear all these layers and never get hot with them," he muttered with a grimace and stood up, walked to the bedside table and turned off the lamp, leaving them in near complete darkness disregarding the neglible light that managed the slither past the door.  
"Come."

The bed creaked as he sat on it, fully aware but choosing to willfully ignore what he was putting himself into.

"Sam -"

"Don't worry," he countered, and as his eyes started getting used to the near-obsolete light of the room he saw Gadreel pull up and follow him there.  
The angel sat next to him and he climbed further on the bed, hand on the other's arm and tugging at the thin cloth that still covered it to prompt the other to move on after him. He settled on his side, breath stuck in his chest and heart racing, and Gadreel followed him still although he was tense and lost enough for Sam to feel it in the air between them. The younger guided him down next to him and brought his arm under the angel's, pressed his knees against the thighs of the other male and let out a small sigh.  
"If you leave now," he said in half a whisper as his voice simply didn't carry the volume he had lowered it to, "I'll flip. So I'm asking you to stay. Just - to stay. I'm not - I don't want sex, if that's what you're thinking. I just want to sleep and you make me feel like maybe I can."

"I will stay."  
A soft huff left the older, hitting Sam on the top of his head. Slowly, the male's chin pressed over that same spot and he leaned his head over the younger's, his arm reaching over the man's body and settling over it as his body relaxed to that pose.  
"If you wish, I could wake you at dawn."

"Thanks."  
A silence.  
"Good night."

"Good night."

 

* * *

 

It took an hour for Sam's fingers and palms to stop mapping out Gadreel's vessel in the dark, but when he slept, he slept soundly. The angel allowed himself to fall into a restful state as well - not to sleep as he'd drifted into twice now but to a lighter, more natural stance of restricted alertness. Oddly enough it felt that connecting with the hunter had given him what he'd not had from other angels since the fall: a link through which he felt himself become stronger again, the old injuries healing faster than when he'd rested alone. And it seemed that he in turn offered some form of security to Sam, a place where he felt safe enough to sleep well, with little thought to keep him from satisfying that need. Hours passed, and outside the moon made a circle around the sky as the horizon from the east grew first darker and then lighter again, changing more than just the appearance of the world around them. Far away from where they were waters were moving in tune to the moon's draw, retreating and returning, and even further the sun was setting to rise for them again. Nature greeted the day of their desperate plan with no special showing; dawn broke on time, and it broke over clear skies.

"I thought it would be strange," Sam muttered against Gadreel's neck as he woke up unprompted mere minutes before the angel had decided to wake him, "to wake up here, but I feel... like this is just the way I wanted it to happen."

"Good morning."

The sentry could feel the smile on Sam's lips when the man brought them over his, this kiss a soft caress rather than the lengthy, drawn-out thing they had created the night before. And this time, Gadreel knew how to respond to it - when the kiss broke, their lips still touched, breath moving from one to the other and the pressure of the need to begin the day growing over them like a rope tightening around their necks.  
"When I come back," Sam spoke against the older's mouth, "is this still going to be here?"

"If you want it to be."

"Do you ever want anything for yourself, or is it just about me?"

Gadreel sighed. He felt his own breath hit his skin as it was deflected by the other.  
"I hope it will be," he corrected himself at order, "but it is not up to me."

Sam's palm slid over his waist and across his back up on his neck and into his short hair.  
"I feel like it's been an eternity since I had this and if it ends today, I'm not sure I have the pieces left to ever try again."

"Then it will be here. I promise."

"Keep it."

The younger moved, parted from him and rolled off on his feet on the other side of the bed. He moved in the dark to the light switch and turned on the ceiling light in time to see Gadreel sitting on the bed, eyes upon him, and he looked back but had an unreadable expression on his face until he finally shook his head and moved off to put on a proper set of clothes.

 

* * *

 

Sam had a creeping feeling that Castiel knew more than he was saying when he descended the stairs into the study. The seraph's eyes followed him across the empty room and he had an expression of concern and doubt on him.  
Unexpectedly the angel followed him into the kitchen where Sam had intended to make coffee, and he brought with him the air of a conversation that wasn't starting, the feel of it brushing up against Sam's neck until his hair was standing on end and he just wanted to shout and ask what the hell was it, or just to tell the older to stop creeping before he stabbed him as a gut reaction.

Finally, once the coffee was dripping, he turned to face the shorter and gave him a piercing look as a thank-you for the stalking.  
"What?" he asked, perhaps more sternly than he'd intended.

Castiel's expression flashed with discomfort and he shifted.  
"I don't know how to ask you this," the seraph admitted. "I just want to know if - something's changed."

"Nothing's changed," Sam replied with a sigh, the tone apologetic for his snapping at the other, "I don't know what you're talking about."  
Or rather, he hoped he didn't know, that this feeling that Castiel had somehow seen directly into the scene that had played out earlier was nothing but good old paranoia.  
  
Slowly, unwillingly, the seraph nodded.  
"I trust your judgement, Sam," he said in the voice that told him that he disagree with it even before the latter part of the sentence ever made an appearance, "but I don't understand it."

"Everything's okay, Cas, really."  
It wasn't paranoia. Somehow, Castiel knew.  
Sam had to stand on his toes to reach up to the cup he wanted to use today - why it had to be that cup specifically, since clearly no one before him had used it in decades, avoided him. Reaching for it did regardless grant him a total of five seconds he didn't have to face the other, and he worried that that may have been the sole reasoning.  
"There's nothing to talk about."

Castiel nodded again.  
"I'll bring Dean," he said with a hint of a sigh in his voice, "we should at least give him the illusion of belonging with us still."

"How was he last night?"

"In pain," the seraph noted with weariness in his voice, "He feels that we've betrayed him, but I spoke with him, and I think even if he refuses to face it, he knows that we're doing the best we can because we care about him. But, Sam..."

"Yeah?"

"Keep an eye on him. Be careful."

Sam nodded.  
"Believe me," he said, "I will."  
He filled the cup and handed it over to Castiel, who accepted it seeming surprised.  
"Let's bring that over to him, okay?"

At the explanation, the seraph's expression lightened and when he nodded, he was smiling. For his own cup, Sam picked one which had been used recently, washed it and filled it with black strong coffee, and as they turned, he was already sipping it despite the temperature.  
"So you and Gadreel will go out first, and, allowed in by Nuriel and Araqiel who are hopefully at position, you'll enter Heaven. Gadreel will take you to the office and you will shatter the tablet."

"Twenty minutes to an hour," Castiel continued for him, "after we've left, you'll leave with Dean to hunt down Metatron."

"About that," Gadreel's voice joined them in the study - he was standing at the corridor's doorway, fully dressed and looking serious, "Is it not worrying that he is so close to our current position?"

"Don't ruin the mood," Sam grunted, but he'd stopped, just like Castiel.

"All I'm saying is that we should be prepared to improvise."

Castiel nodded. Sam couldn't help but notice how his eyes bounced from the hunter to Gadreel and back again for a couple more times than was necessary. Gadreel, on the other hand, seemed to notice nothing out of the usual about it.  
"You think he knows?" Castiel asked, and for a second Sam was unable to tell what he was referring to not to mention being baffled as to why he'd address himself in the third person.  
Then, feeling like the coffee might indeed be like a miracle medicine for the state his brain was in, he realised Castiel was of course still talking about Metatron and the plan.

"I think he expects us to aim for his weaknesses, at the very least. He expects that you know by now that the angel tablet is what powers him. He would take precautions to make sure no one can betray him."

"But he doesn't know about Dean," Sam noted.

"If we are to arm him with the Blade, no. He would not see that coming."

"I hate this plan."  
Sam brushed his hand across his face and left it rubbing at the base of his jaw as he lifted the cup up to his lips again.  
"I hate this plan and I hate what we're doing to my brother. For all we know, the intervention could be working."

"It's not, Sam," Castiel put in, suddenly looking drained, "It prolongs an inevitable end. We are killing him. The Mark feeds on him when it can't feed on killing. When he kills, the Mark powers him in turn. We need to get rid of that but before we figure it out - before we can even try - we need to make sure he doesn't die. And since we can use the help..."

"I know. I _know_ ," Sam sighed.  
He laid his coffee on the table and sent both of his hands rubbing at his neck instead, perhaps for a flicker of comfort. The relaxation, preparedness the morning had left him with was fading quickly to be replaced by stress and fear, the two factors he needed a boost in the least.  
"Letting him kill targets that need to die in a reasonably controlled environment. Like he's a goddamn test subject. The thing is, we don't control him and we don't control anything about the Mark. The only thing we can hope is that he wants to play nice with us and you know what? I'm pretty sure he doesn't today. Not after we've put him through by now."

"Let's bring him the coffee at least. Gadreel - make sure we'll be ready in about an hour."

Gadreel nodded.  
"I will wait," he said, and Sam noticed he wished the sentry would at least look at him, but instead the older's eyes stayed upon Castiel until he turned to leave.


	8. A Promise

* * *

 

 

Nuriel and Araqiel were in position.  
"I would die for a chance to join you at this, brother," Nuriel said quietly, adding another 'brother' to the sentence when her eyes turned to look at Gadreel from Castiel.

Castiel smiled at her briefly, the chains upon him making the sight somewhat sadder than it should have seemed.  
"You already have," he reassured the older, "You are playing an important part."

"Standing here with my fingers crossed for the best, yes," Nuriel sighed as she finished the portal's design with Araqiel on the other side doing the exact same, "What a privilege. But I understand how crucial it is that I stay."  
Her eyes turned to Gadreel again and she smiled almost teasingly.  
"So I was on the list."

"The... list?" Gadreel replied, head tilting.

"The list of bad recruits."

A smile replaced that tilt, and it was almost shy in tone.  
"I knew you were a weak link. I did not think you as directly rebellious as you've turned out to be. Make sure that will not change, sister," he replied.

"My direct rebellion or my silence about it? Don't you worry. I'd be quiet with you still if I didn't trust Castiel's judgement, but I do. The spell is ready. Araqiel?"

"We should hurry," the cherub agreed, "It is strange enough that Gadreel has been gone from the post for this long, no matter how much we insist on getting our orders directly from him. Every moment counts. And please..."  
He, unlike Nuriel, looked to Gadreel first and only then to Castiel, perhaps each choosing the one they trusted more to address.  
"... succeed."

"The very least we can do is to try, Araqiel. Thank you," Gadreel replied to him.

The portal flared, and they stepped through; the call of Heaven was strong within the blaze but it meant nothing good to Gadreel, and he noticed himself longing for the bunker rather than for his home when the playground disappeared from around them.

 

* * *

 

"Dean."

The older lifted his head, pale in the bright study's lights like he suffered from heavy anemia, and perhaps, his condition considered, that was exactly what it was. Sam sat on the opposite side of the table, doubting the plan more by the second, each of which was bringing them closer to the now that they needed to leave the premises.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah."  
Dean had been crushing a shop receipt in his fingertips for the past fifteen minutes and now he chucked it over the table, hitting Sam directly on the forehead.  
"Yeah, you know, I don't give a damn. Let's just get this over with so you can lock me back up."

"Dean."

"I know you're sorry, you already said it. Change the record, please, the loop's killing me."

"No, I meant we need to go."

"Finally."  
Dean was up before Sam was, each of his movements uncannily resembling a doll being propped up like his muscles were man-made and obeyed another master.  
"Now where's my Baby?"

 

* * *

 

"It's - not here."  
Castiel kneeled on the floor and opened another drawer.  
"It's not here. Gadreel."

"I swear that is where he keeps it. Where else would it -"

"Gadreel."  
Castiel turned; he had a half-scared, half-frustrated look on him.  
"Their lives depend on this, now where is it?"

"I told you, I've no idea - you think I'm responsible for this?"

"Who else?"

"Castiel!"  
The older stepped towards the seraph, looking him in the eye without hesitation.  
"If I wanted to betray you, I would have done it differently. Look at me and tell me if I am lying. The only reason it would not be there is if Metatron took it out before leaving, or this is not his office."

The doubt on the other faded slowly. His shoulders lurched and he walked back to where he'd left looking shamed and defeated at once.  
"I'm sorry, brother."

"You do not need to apologise, I know I have not earned your trust yet. But if it is not there, we should call this off before -"

The ground was moving.  
It took a moment for Gadreel to understand - to accept - that the room was changing. Something about Castiel's switch in position had triggered a spell, and this was _not_ the office. The walls, like mountains, grew tall and thick and bare to push aside those of the room that had never existed the way it had appeared to them, and the wooden floors, the carpets upon them shattered to dust to reveal a cold, white floor of stone instead. The bars, the black bars of heaven's strongest metal that nothing could bend, sprouted from within that floor like spears piercing through flesh only to sink into the arch above, lodging themselves inside the material so firmly that no living thing would be strong enough to wrestle them out.  
The dusty air was replaced with the cold smell of a stone cave, dripping with water by the corners where moisture gathered, mixing in with the smell of rust, and the cold light that Gadreel knew by experience to have very little to do with the natural light of the sun shone to illuminate all without shadow to be seen.

He couldn't believe it, but there was little room for reason within the pure, unadultered fear that gripped him and flooded over him like a tidal wave. Each of his movements was blurry, his ears were full of water and he could barely hear his own voice - the walls did not give in. The bars did not give in. They were real, physical, and he was trapped inside them. This wasn't a flash, a memory turned physical: this wasn't a nightmare or his mind betraying him. This, somehow, was real; the hell that he'd never really escaped had grown around him like a shell to contain him, locking him inside the one and only thing that he'd ever truly feared. The floor seemed to be flooding like his mind was, and the cold from it echoed with the sounds of uniform, voiceless screams from deep within its white stone which for centuries had been watered by Gadreel's own broken, bleeding grace.

_No! Not here!_

 

* * *

 

"You think we're gonna make it?"

"Yeah."  
Sam shifted uncomfortably on the seat - it had to be the fifteenth time.  
"Yeah. Just like we always do."

"You know, that's exactly what I said before you locked me up like I'm some kinda criminal."

"Dean, no offense, but you really kind of are."

The stare the older aimed at him did not make him more comfortable. Even in the broad daylight the disconnect between this man next to him and the brother he knew was so stark and so unsettling that it made his skin crawl. If there had been any place else he could have been, he would have rather been there. Instead he was alone with this being of rage and bloodlust, locked in a car, and he had a distinctive feeling that Dean knew the Blade was nearby.

"So you gonna treat me like one, huh? Like I'm not your brother anymo- oh, wait, I'm not. I forgot. Because, you know what, up until that day I had this funny idea that family was the most important thing. That me and you, nothing could break that. But you threw it out, just like that, like it was nothing, because did what I _had_ to."

Every word of the older's seemed to either lower or raise the temperature in the car. Often enough it felt like it was freezing despite the Kansas early summer sunlight.

"You're still my brother," Sam sighed, hoping he was right, "I just wish you'd act the part."

"The hell do you want, Sam?"

"Stop yelling. I want you to stop yelling. That'd be a great start."  
The taller sighed again and raised his fingertips to rub at his temples. This wasn't only scaring him, it was wearing him out. For the first time in an eternity he didn't feel tired, but Dean was doing a good job at taking that away from him.  
"I wish you'd admit that what you did was wrong."

"What the hell was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. I really don't. I just hate what you did. Not you, and I know why you did it, I just - I wish you hadn't."

"Yeah, I've heard _that_ already."

"I know. I'm just trying to - hell, I'm trying to fix this. Are you?"

The car slowed down. Dean lifted a hand from the wheel and wiped his face, leaving the palm over his mouth and his eyes didn't once part from the road ahead. Then, suddenly, he steered the car over and looked directly at Sam instead.  
"I wish I cared, Sammy, I really do. But I'm done fixing this. You're not gonna like me any better no matter what I do, I'll always come second to you. But you've never come second to me, _ever_ , and I wish that meant something to you."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Everything, Sam! Ruby, Amelia, everything! I always give anything, everything to keep you safe, to keep you alive, and when it's my turn, you don't think I'm worth the while. You find something else, because that's what you think normal people do. Well, newsflash, Sammy, normal people _care about their family_."

Something happened; a collision, the car swaying, flashes of skin and black leather and the dashboard. Suddenly Sam found himself gripping Dean's shirt, holding him against the car's door, watching him laugh in surprise. He wanted to kill the other on spot and then he wanted to bury his head into Dean's bleeding chest and cry himself to sleep and never wake up again. That was it.  
There wasn't anything he wanted to say: the only thing he wanted to do was to hurt Dean until the real thing would come back to him, but he did nothing, just kept pinning the man down and breathing like an angry bull at his face.

"That sure got a rise out of you," Dean laughed breathlessly, "The truth hurts, doesn't it? But hey, you've gotta face up to it, man. That's what you've been telling me the whole time and it'd be embarrassing if it was complete bullshit, right? Practice what you preach, baby brother."

Sam's grip loosened. Slowly, like stuck in a lagging film, he fell back on the shotgun as if all energy had been drained from him.  
"The Mark's poisoning you, Dean," he uttered, shoulder finally hitting the door on the opposite side, "I'm not going to have this talk with you when you physically can't have it. I shouldn't - it's not worth it. Just drive."

"The Mark? The - the _Mark_? You think this is _the Mark_ talking, Sam?"

"Yeah," Sam scoffed, "I'm actually certain of it. I still remember my brother, Dean, and that's the Mark talking, not him."

"No, Sammy, this is me. This is one hundred percent organic, non-plasticine, no additives or extra flavourings _me_ , and I'm tired of your crap, Sam. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of always being the one who never does anything right, when everything I do I do for you, one way or another."

"Oh, yeah?"

" _'Oh, yeah?'_ \- fuck you, Sam. Just - just fuck you."  
The car let out a howl when the older kicked the pedal down and forced the engine to its limits with complete disregard for the vehicle's age and capabilities. Sam's stomach seemed to fall off the ride immediately but despite the cold sweat that resulted from the scare he showed no outer signs of fear or any other reaction at all: his expression was dull and void, matching the defeat inside him.

"You're everything to me," he spoke quietly to the windshield, avoiding looking anywhere near the man himself, "I just wish you'd see it."

Dean let out a low growl and leaned forwards as the car kept speeding, as if to remove himself from the situation entirely.

 

* * *

 

The cells prevented communication from the prisoners; Gadreel knew it, but he was almost certain Castiel did not. Right there, right behind that wall, the other probably thought he was hearing everything just fine and only chose not to answer. The sentry tried to find the words but Hannah on the other side was firmly positioned between them, making sure they were going nowhere and saying nothing - making sure they did not plot, and plotting was the only thing that Gadreel could care about. He had to get out. There had to be a way.  
There was no way.

He circled around the cell, ears still ringing so heavily he barely heard what was spoken between Castiel and Hannah. Then, finally, he lurched on the seat in the midst of stacks of broken stone, mind empty but for the knowledge of... _everything_ around him: the fact that he was back here, and that this time he'd never leave. No miracle would come twice to shake him out of this cell, to give him another opportunity to fight his way out from its reach for good. It was over.  
His fingertips treaded the dust almost unnoticeably, brushing aside the only thing that brought some diversity to the smooth surface, and he tried to get the sound out of his ears, tried to concentrate through the mist that was strangling, but not killing, him.  
More than anything he wished it would; he wished that he could just pick up one of the stones and pierce his body with it, but it wouldn't do enough damage, not even a sharp one - unless...

Slowly, he turned his head.  
The flesh he still remained bound in (and how much worse that would make the torture, to have that much leverage over him - flesh was so easy to hurt, had so many different ways to receive pain, so many aspects to ruin and defile and leave to bleed) was throbbing with the heartbeat that belonged to him and not the soul that was as quiet as always, but at least he wasn't - he wasn't _alone_ , was he?

Castiel was speaking. Hannah was mocking them; she was angry and hurt.  
Gadreel's eyes were stuck on a particular piece of shattered stone, his hands unmoving but tingling at the promise of an end to the pain all the same: a way out. A way out, just as long as no one took it away from him.

With his legs weak, Gadreel stood up and turned to cover what he was doing: Castiel keeping Hannah busy was essential, and he would have given much to tell him that. Castiel would have tried to stop him, but what reason did he have to live? What promise was there beyond suffering if he'd not end it here now? He could grant an open way for Castiel, and he would never have to fear again himself. There was no downside. He'd live on through his brother - through their victory - or die a martyr for the right reasons, it didn't matter. Not if the alternative was... was the cell, the cold, the pain, the hatred, all of it; he couldn't, wouldn't, bear it again. And sooner than he'd care, the shards would be taken, too. He'd be pushed against the wall, cut, hurt, beaten, and he'd be left with nothing - not the dust, not the stone, nothing but the knowledge of solitude and fear and suffering that would last an eternity. Because he deserved it and nothing more. Because no one cared about him. Because no one saw his love, his loyalty, only his betrayal, his -

He closed his eyes. Was he speaking? Had he said something? If, then to whom?  
Why was the room, the corridor so quiet? He breathed out, listening. The banter started again. He'd said nothing.

As quietly as he could he split the shirt that couldn't be opened down along its front, to reveal the mortal's chest and the core of him directly underneath. A faltering smile passed his lips as fear flooded into him stronger than it had before, pumping in him like the trapped force of thunder, in all his veins and in his chest that felt nothing but blinding pain, dizziness taking over his mind as he cut for the first time. The stone wasn't sharp, but it was sharp enough: he could smell the blood amongst the smell of the prison itself. The others wouldn't. Not yet.  
He was a uniform pulse of grace and flesh trapped in horror; the stone, somehow, felt like it was relieving that chaos. His breathing was heavy and he hoped Hannah wouldn't stop to question: he must have looked like he was staring out into the white unnatural light, or bathing in it, or - it didn't really matter. As long as the younger would stay out and keep herself busy elsewhere, it would mean nothing even if she noticed. If she'd kill him, it'd at least end the pain. Castiel...

_You made a promise._

The stone slipped, scratching skin outside the triangle but not cutting flesh or even drawing blood. Carefully Gadreel returned it to the track, or as carefully as he could with his hands shaking, but conflict had entered his mind instead of the blind panic that had driven him towards quick completion.

Hannah's voice was cold, frustrated when she spoke.  
"Okay, so you're telling me that Metatron set you up, arranged those suicide bombers to make himself look like the victim."

"Gadreel was his second-in-command. For what other reason than the truth would he turn against Metatron?"

"So now I'm expected to trust the word of an angel who's only ever thought of himself since the Garden, and you - you told us not a single angel more would die in this fight."

"What do you think I have been trying to do?"

The blur from the words was shifting, and the words bit deep. The long cuts ached deeper than the short ones that stung like burns, but Gadreel's hand was firm enough to make sure each of them was at least approximately the same depth, even if none of them quite pointed to the right direction or stayed symmetrical, straight and precise like he'd wanted. His whole body was shaking.  
Yes, he was selfish.

_You promised him._

The sentry cast a quick glance over his shoulder, making sure Hannah was looking elsewhere. Hannah didn't care about him in the least - it was good enough news for Gadreel. Her attention was solely on Castiel, because Castiel was the one who she felt had betrayed her. Gadreel was just scum, invisible, irrelevant.  
The angel who'd only ever thought of himself since the Garden; fair enough.

_'Do you ever want anything for yourself, or is it just about me?'_

His hand slipped again.  
He'd promised.

_'Keep it.'_

If he'd thought the vessel's heart couldn't beat any harder, he'd been wrong. He couldn't breathe from the pain but suddenly there was silence in his mind where before had been screaming and struggle.

_'If this ends tomorrow, I don't think I'll have the pieces left to ever try again.'_

He closed his eyes against the white light and tried to breathe slower, calmer.

_'I just want to sleep, and... you make me feel like maybe I can.'_

_'I promise.'_

_'Keep it.'_

Keep it.  
Was that an order?

He was trembling.  
It was an order.

A small smile crossed his lips as he finished the cross through the middle: the pain was irrelevant. His heart was calming down as was his breathing: he'd made a promise, he'd received an order, and out there was a man who'd said he needed him - needed him back, needed him alive - and who'd told him that this was exactly what Metatron wanted. Surely Gadreel was stronger than that - stronger than what Metatron thought him to be and at least strong enough to keep his promise to Sam Winchester, who'd shown him that he was worth more than a death alone in the place that he hated and feared the most.

The trick might still work, so he let the words spill out.  
He wasn't _just_ selfish.  
He had a mission, a mission that defined him; a mission that at all times was to be kept the main priority.  
God had commanded him to love humanity above all else, but he hadn't needed that commandment to live by this law. Now, thousands of years later, a human being had taught him what angels would never learn: forgiveness was not earned. It was a gift.


	9. Brothers

* * *

 

Metatron had waited for them. He'd prepared for them. Sam stood from the dusty ground, his nose dripping with so much blood he kept drawing it back in as he gasped for air, ribs aching; there was no other option but for the angel to be right. He'd trapped Castiel and Gadreel - this plan wasn't going to work. Not with the angel blades, at least.  
 _Not with the angel blades._

The thought made him choke and he moaned, sliding back on his knee in physical pain from something wholly other than the injuries he'd suffered.  
"Dean," he called out across the room.

"Picked a bad timing, Sam!" the other yelped in turn, barely avoiding an invisible blade of air that would have inevitably sent him into the wall just as had happened with Sam mere moments earlier.  
He rolled across the floor as a result, only managing to rise up on his knees before Metatron with a snort of laughter as if he was truly enjoying himself, and Sam didn't doubt it, sent him flying regardless of the first dodge.

At least he hit the wall closer to Sam now.

"Dean - catch!"  
It happened so fast that neither Metatron nor Dean had the senses to react to it, but Sam had a good shot - the cloth-wrapped First Blade crossed the air and the youngest prayed to all deities and celestials who were not against him that this was the right choice to make. It was the only one, as far as he could see, that would get them out alive.

The blade hit Dean heavy on the thigh, the cloth unwrapping just enough to cause a frozen kind of a silence in the room. Then, much faster than Metatron, the older brother's hand cast aside the rest of the cloth and wrapped around the handle - Sam could see from the corner of his eyes how the Blade sent fire through the older's veins into the Mark on his arm, but his vision was locked to Dean's eyes that stared at him, and for a moment he could see his brother behind the pain that had trapped him within.  
Then, as if had started time was flowing again, Dean turned towards Metatron.

"Game's changed, pal," he growled through gritted teeth and launched an attack.  
This time, he drew blood.

 

* * *

 

The key dropped.  
Hannah was trembling - it wasn't just the vessel, it was her whole form from the tips of her torn wings to the claws that rooted her to the ground, and Gadreel felt a surge of warmth to her that far overpowered the hurt her words had caused. He loved her - she was his sister still. It was an eternal conflict inside him, this all-consuming loyalty to his family, his desire for them to never be harmed, to never suffer pain or fear, to exist in unity again, which was only ever met by cold rejection and disgust for him in turn.

"Gadreel, don't do this."  
Castiel's voice was pleading, but he'd backed off. Gadreel could hear it in the distance between them.

Hannah's fingertips struggled to find the key - she wasn't looking at it. She was afraid that if she turned her eyes, Gadreel would trigger the sigil and kill her.  
He tried on a smile but didn't know if it reached his features. More than the most of him wanted nothing but to drive the make-do dagger through the center of the spell and cease existing, but he held onto the thoughts that the memory of Sam had raised within him: the desire to better himself, to serve, to help.

Instead of holding the blade up he lowered it slightly to signal Hannah he would wait for her decision. If she'd think it meant he didn't mean what he threatened, he'd trigger the sigil. There would be no other way then. Yet if she'd follow through with her intention to save him, herself and likely Castiel too by opening the door, he'd live to face the next threat of torture and imprisonment, or to see the day that he no longer had to fear such an end. It seemed like a comforting thought, one he'd been holding onto before, and when Hannah finally grasped the key and pushed it into the lock, eyes locked with Gadreel's with something like regret in them, he felt relieved.

The stone fell on the ground the moment the door opened.

"Thank you, sister," he said, now certainly smiling although he was shaken and conflicted and scared still.  
Just as afraid, Hannah responded to it - perhaps it was instinctive or perhaps she truly felt that way, it didn't matter. She was not holding her blade and appeared to have no intention of eliminating the threat in the room; instead she spun around and quickly released Castiel as well.

"Don't make me regret this," she huffed, terror fading to make room for the anger that relief so often sprouted.

Castiel smiled as he exited the cell.  
"We must hurry," he said, palm sliding over Hannah's arm and landing on Gadreel's shoulder.  
"Good thinking, brother."

_I feared you'd go through with it. I'm sorry, Gadreel. I'm so sorry for doubting you. For - for everything. I was wrong to hold onto my prejudices. I hope you can forgive me,_ he spoke instead through the link formed between them now that neither was restricted by the power of the cells.

_Your words mean much to me,_ Gadreel replied in turn as they moved hastily towards the section's door, _There is no bad blood between us. I trust you, Castiel, and I am honoured to hear that you trust me in turn. There is nothing I value more than that. Thank you._

 

* * *

 

Something was changing. It started from a slight, easy-to-miss moment when Metatron lost his footing - he didn't fall back, but Sam noticed the quick stumble. Then he just couldn't do what he'd done before. He was still strong: hell, an angel never was weak, but he wasn't... he wasn't _God_ anymore. Dean fought like a beast, but the scribe deflected every blow, now fighting with his own blade for once.  
Instinctively when the weapons hit together as Dean parred an attack Sam expected the metal to cut into the bone, but instead it sounded like it had hit solid stone and the blow seemed to cause Metatron to take a step back to keep his balance. Dean noticed that too and charged again, only to gain a gash upon his left arm as he barely dodged a blow when his own missed.

Sam gripped his angel blade and looked for the best place to situation himself. His body was aching but his mind seemed sharper than ever: if he could get Metatron before Dean had him, the Mark wouldn't be satisfied, not even with the Blade driving it. He could still prevent the older from sinking deeper into this madness, although he would have to run for his life and, in the worst case, fight his own brother for it, but it was worth the try if it meant saving Dean from whatever it was that the combination was poisoning him with. The only thing - the _only_ thing - he had to do first was to kill Metatron, and he wished to hell and back it would have been as easy to do as it sounded in his mind.

His steps took him swiftly to behind the fighters, and to his slight shock he realised he was completely invisible to them both. Neither of them considered him a factor anymore; he was out of the game, too weak to partake in the dance of the giants. For a moment this realisation stunned him: it was the perfect opportunity. Now he'd just have to use it. More than anything, he'd have to use it so that Dean wouldn't catch up to what he was doing, as the predator had set his eyes upon the prey and had little desire to let Sam interfere.

He let them fight for a moment longer: they were losing edge, becoming so consumed by the fight as their strengths faded that neither probably even remembered that Sam existed, or simply assumed that he kept out of the fight to let the stronger beings battle it through for him. They moved from the spotlight to shadows and back again and Sam followed, feeling like a lone wolf watching two hogs fight to death, picking the one his eyes had first set upon despite knowing the one left alive would be deadly in turn. Finally, almost unexpectedly, he saw his opportunity. Metatron stumbled as Dean leapt at him, and then Sam was there, blade straight and strong between them and body ready to accept the full weight of the angel's vessel upon him and particularly over the arm and the wrist of the hand that held the weapon. It pierced through with the sheer power granted to it by Metatron's fall and Sam barely had to assist it, yet he did so regardless - he sought out the heart and twisted, yanked the blade to make sure it killed instead of injuring. In front of him - in front of the body that now shone with bright, white-and-blue light, Dean stared at it happen with his eyes wide open like he couldn't understand what he was seeing, the First Blade securely in his grip, trembling as he held it. A small moan left Sam's mouth as he stepped back and released the angel blade from the scribe's back, and blood spilled over his hand and arm and stomach as he did so, warm with the life that he'd just taken.  
He was panting, but the worst wasn't this. He had no time to celebrate.

Dean had just turned to look at him instead, and the look on his face spoke of uncontrolled, absolute rage.

 

* * *

 

Castiel left Hannah by the doorway and returned to Gadreel. He seemed uncertain how to proceed now.  
"They need a leader," he said in a pleading tone, "I don't want to be it."

Gadreel nodded.  
"We need to establish a temporary order. Hannah is a capable soldier. She should be able to hold it all together until we have conclusion."

"I told her as much. She wanted to know about our future. I can't tell her anything."

"Of course not."  
Gadreel shifted.  
"We should leave. If Metatron wins - someone has to be left to fight his tyranny. It might as well be us. Many others might not dare to try."

Castiel shivered visibly.  
"You are right," he said in a quiet, worried voice, "It is better if we leave now. If Sam and Dean are back when we return, today has been a victory that I did not dare to hope for."  
He cast a look at Gadreel and Gadreel knew exactly what he feared. Both of them had lived. How likely it was that the Winchesters had been as succesful?  
"They are strong," the younger continued then as if to convince himself, "They've been through much worse. We did what we could."

"Brother," Gadreel called out warmly, "I am sure that you are right."

They crossed the room with the shards of the tablet collected in the only bag they'd found - an empty paper bag from a Chinese takeaway restaurant - and entered the hallway where Hannah still stood, waiting for orders. She wasn't happy with what she got but agreed to keep the curious angels under normal routine until further instructions. She escorted them through the muttering crowd and none of the others seemed to even consider stopping her or the two rebels she now sided with. The portal flared with the blue light it had glown with before as it swallowed and relocated them, and the playground looked as untouched as ever.

"Is it done?" Araqiel asked.

Castiel nodded.  
"Now the only thing we can do is hope for the best," he spoke grimly.

"We will report to you if the situation changes, Castiel," Nuriel said, her eyes strictly staring at the edge of the playground, "God help us all."

 

* * *

 

Sam slammed the door closed, threw a moldy drawer in front of it and found himself locked inside. The door was metal but the lock wouldn't hold - it was bent already, badly enough to let the light from the other side in. And then... there was no more light to see. Dean stood outside, covering it, for the briefest moment before slamming the Blade at, or into, the door with such a force it didn't belong to a human being. The younger found himself breathing quite calmly, as if accepting of his fate: he'd die here. He'd die here, and that was alright. It wasn't ideal: he'd always hoped for a quiet room in a place he could call a home, with someone there beside him watching the sunset or silently reading a book, unaware of him slipping away, but this wasn't too bad. Dean would hack him into pieces and it would be over - there was nothing he could do. This time, Dean would have to save himself.

As he fought to overcome the desire to fight back for the sole reason that he couldn't let _Dean_ down again, telling himself he had no chance against whatever it was that held the older prisoner and he'd just end them in conflict instead, he realised that something was missing. Namely, the beast himself was missing.  
The door was letting in light again: not a sound could be heard from the corridor. He considered for a moment - was there any way for him to check safely, without risking himself? More than likely it was a trap. Dean would know that Sam wasn't going to let him disappear. The younger would come out soon, and by stepping aside...

A quiet sound caught Sam's attention. It was like a gasp, a growl, and then - out of the blue - the sound of a body colliding with the wall and sliding down along it. Sam budged. He pushed himself off the wall that he'd backed to and moved to the door, listening; he could hear Dean's heavy breathing and the sound of the First Blade as it ground against the floor along with each of his brother's raspy gasps. It didn't sound like a trap. It sounded like something he hadn't taken in consideration, or rather, something that he'd forgotten in the heat of the battle and his desire to prevent the Mark from winning.  
Quickly Sam undid the lock and pushed aside the drawer that fell into piece as he kicked it along, proving what a useless barrier it had been to begin with. He pulled the door open to the dimly lit corridor and its stone-and-rust walls, the concrete floor, and nothing more. When he stepped out, he knew where to look and what he saw seemed to catch his breath inside his lungs and hold it still against his orders.

"Dean?"

The older was sitting with his back against the wall and legs spread in front of him in the exact pose he'd slid into, nose bleeding and eyes unfocused, barely conscious; his grip of the Blade was still firm but Sam didn't think of it now.

"Dean - Dean. Look at me. Hey. _Hey_. Come on."  
His palms pressed against the man's cheeks and all of a sudden they felt as cold as they were colourless - had he looked like this the whole time, or had it happened this suddenly?  
"Dean, man, can you hear me? Oh, God. God. Dean!"

"Don't... yell, Sam."  
A faint smile.  
"I'm dying, not deaf."

"Don't say that to me. C'mon, we've gotta get out of here. It's done, Dean, we did it. We'll get you back to the bunker and you'll get some sleep, it'll be okay. You did great. You - you did great."

The older shook his head. He raised a hand to Sam's cheek in turn, spreading dust from the floor over the taller's face, and although he seemed only half-conscious, he managed to look the younger right in the eye.  
"I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm _sorry_."

"Shut up."  
Sam felt choked, horrified, numb.  
"Don't apologise. C'mon. C'mon, man, you'll be okay. You'll be okay. Let go of the Blade, yeah?"

"Let's face it, Sammy, the Blade's probably the only thing keeping me alive."  
Dean grimaced, and the sound he let out might have been a desperate laughter.  
"I'm scared. I'm so scared. Of what it does to me, of - of - what if it's just me, man? It's not the Blade. All of this... it's - me. It feels like it's more me than... than I ever was, Sammy. Like I just needed this to be what I always... was, anyway."

"Dean, you're - you're not. This isn't you, man, I know you. I know my own brother."

The smile on Dean was still fading, but it was warm, genuine.  
"You know what I started thinking? When I realised I can't keep up, I can't lift a finger, that I'm just gonna... I was happy, you know, that - that I couldn't get that door down first. But that's not what I was... thinking. I thought, when you were up to my waist and you had that stupid curly hair, I found this photo of me when I was younger and - and we looked like the same guy, Sam. Like... I grew up from you and you'd grow up into me. And I guess at that - at that moment... I knew - there wouldn't be - I would never be, I could never live, without you. That photo got me here. But it hasn't been all bad, has it, Sam? Tell me I did okay."

Sam couldn't help the tears, and he couldn't drag the older up either. He was afraid it'd break something, weaken Dean, and maybe - but he wouldn't voice that thought.  
"Dean, you've gotta - you've gotta listen to me, man. I just - all I want you to know is that you already exist without me. You're a _person_ , Dean. And you mean the world to me. You're my _brother_ , and you mean the world to me."  
He swallowed, unable to speak for a moment and still letting out a faint, whimpery sound.  
"You want to do me a favour? Dean."

"I don't know if I can anymore, Sammy."

"Just - I'm just asking you to hold on. We'll get you to the car and I'll drive and we'll figure this out together. Just like I promised. This, the Mark, all of it. You and me. Like we always do."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of part one.


	10. Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second part. Sorry for the short chapter, I'm absolutely miserable and this is all I can muster through right now.

* * *

 

The silence was unforgiving. It was like an echo of a scream inside Sam's mind as he pulled Dean's arm over his shoulders and helped the older out of the car and into the garage. He would have given everything to make the man take a single step on his own but Dean just couldn't - he barely had the strength to grip Sam in turn and the Mark on his arm burned hot like an infected wound or flesh freshly branded by red-hot metal. Sam could feel it pulse against his skin and he wanted to scream and pull out his knife, cut it out, and he would if it would come to that: he'd take the whole portion of skin out if it would help.  
Somehow he already knew it wouldn't. The Mark was more than just the physical brand. Perhaps part of removing it would require cutting it out but at least it would have to be done with a specific weapon, not just any skinning knife or some machete from the Impala's trunk.

The corridor dulled the scream and turned the silence into an oppressive invisible force like a landslide burying them in a shared grave.

"Not much longer, Dean. Hang in there. You can do it."

Dean's response was limited to holding him that much tighter: Sam dragged him all the way to his room powered solely by that feeling.

"Sam...?" the older muttered hollowly as Sam laid him on the bed, eyes barely opening, "Could you... mom's picture."

The younger blinked, stumbled backwards and barely dared to turn; he grabbed the framed photo and laid it on the bedside table instead, facing towards the bed. Then he sat down next to the older and took his hand in a firm grip.  
"You're gonna be okay, Dean."

Dean grimaced.  
"No," he sighed raspily, "I'm not."

"Don't say that. Don't say that, Dean. I'm not gonna just sit here and let you die. That's not how it goes."

"Then why are you crying?"  
The older smiled, closing his eyes. His breathing was turning more laboured by the minute and there was absolutely nothing Sam could do to stop it. He considered carrying the other right back into the car and driving him to the hospital, but if they'd learned something it was that hospitals couldn't treat the kind of injuries they suffered. But maybe the angels could. Maybe one of them alone would suffice, or maybe they could do it together; he held onto that hope as he tried to undo the Blade from Dean's hand, but the two of them were like the bone was Dean's own just sticking out of his flesh and it wouldn't budge no matter how Sam wrestled it. The blood on it made it seem plausible to think that it had indeed pierced Dean's own skin as much as it had cut into others.  
"Look, Sammy, it's - it's better this way. You were... right."

"What?"

"I can't use this."  
The hand in which the Blade hung so tightly twitched as if to rise but lacking the strength to do so.  
"I can't kill. It's making me into something I don't want to be. So... thank you. Thank you for making that kill for me. For what it's worth... at least I'm not... a monster. At least, Sammy... I get to die as myself."

"Dean -"

"Don't... argue. Not now."  
Silence. A faint smile lingered upon Dean's lips for a brief while before fading into a sigh.  
"Just keep me company... as I go."

 

* * *

 

Gadreel knew right away what they were looking at, but Castiel didn't seem to grasp the full picture. There was Sam - the usual radiance of his soul wasn't tarnished but rather seemed enhanced by the pain that burned inside him as he turned a pleading look towards them. Dean on the other hand appeared to be almost entirely unharmed physically, but his soul was so thick with corruption it was like black smoke with none of the fire that had distinguished it from the rest before. His vitals were dropping and the whole room smelled of death, but the spirit was chained to the flesh and the Mark would have prevented a reaper from approaching the soul even if reapers would have been able to do it now in the first place. The sight was horrifying, and it only became more so with the knowledge of what was happening - what _would_ happen, inevitably, as there was nothing any of them could do to interfere.

But Castiel and Sam neither seemed to be taking any action to prevent the worse from becoming the worst.

"We have to prepare," Gadreel spoke direly to wake them from the incapacitating grief, "We have to make sure that when it happens, everyone is as safe as we can be."

For a while, Sam just stared at him blankly. Then he blinked and shook his head to scatter the mist from his thoughts and some clarity returned behind the wall of tears.  
"When - what?"

"A devil's trap. Anything will do. But we have to hurry, it won't take long now."

"What? What won't take long?"

They - they did not know? Did they not know? How could they - how was it possible? He stared, disbelieving, first at Sam and then at Castiel. It was in the story - the story of Cain and Abel. It was the very core of the lore surrounding the Knights. They'd done nothing but dwelled in these for weeks and somehow it seemed they'd ignored or simply chosen to not see the most important part of the creation of a Knight - none of that made any sense.  
"The brand has almost entirely corrupted his soul. Surely you... you had to know this."

"What are you talking about?" Castiel snapped, taking a firm grip of Gadreel's hoodie despite the wound that still ached over his chest.

"If you do not know then for Heaven's sake, we cannot afford to stop for an explanation. Draw a trap and I will explain the moment we can be certain we don't have to kill him with his own weapon when he rises. Do it!"

While Castiel still seemed to be more fond of the thought of pushing him against the wall than doing what Gadreel had told him to, Sam stumbled up and pulled open a drawer after another until he found a spray can, and without a question he made a trap in the middle of the room, just pushing aside the angels when they got in the way as he finished the job.  
"Help me move the bed," he huffed, grabbing the end of it.

They did - with two angels, even if one of them was injured and the other burning out, it was much easier than Sam seemed to have expected. Immediately once the bed's feet had landed upon the floor, the hunter turned to Gadreel in turn and did what Castiel hadn't: he pushed him against the wall with enough power to force the air out of the vessel's lungs, and then he pressed right up close until his breathing was hitting the other's mouth and their noses nearly touched.  
"Talk. What the hell are you saying? That he's turning? Into a - a _demon_?"

"I... thought you knew. I'm sorry. I would have told you a long time ago if I'd known that you didn't."  
Sam didn't know of the sigil hidden underneath the layer of black; his fist was pressing into the wounds and the pain didn't only flash across the vessel, it was hurting Gadreel directly, but he made no sound to complain. He felt as if all of that was secondary - Sam's pain was a priority before his own.  
"The Mark is the brand that heralds the curse which was cast upon Cain. It corrupts the soul and turns it into a Knight; the final seal is the moment the life force of the body is consumed, one way or another, and the soul is released. It cannot ascend and it will not be damned to hell, but rather to walk the earth as Cain was, unable to die; unable to be killed."

"We killed Abaddon. That's not true. How do we - how do I prevent it? Tell me - _tell me!_ "

"Sam, he doesn't know."  
Castiel laid a hand over Sam's shoulder and gently pulled him back, casting a worried look towards his brother as he did so. Sam looked as if he was about to fight them both but then just seemed to lose the will.  
"I don't know, either."

"We have to do something. We have to do _something_."

"I know," the seraph agreed, now turning to look at Dean instead and his battered grace flashed with pure grief.  
"We will do what we must."

"I can heal him. I can - I can turn him back, right? With my blood. I can cure him. He just - he just has to come to first. I can heal him."  
Sam turned to look at Gadreel again as if the sentry would suddenly have all the answers for them. He didn't, and said nothing in turn. When the hunter couldn't get an answer from him he turned towards Castiel instead.  
"Right?"

Castiel was still looking at Dean, but he nodded slowly.  
"At least we can try."

"Doing it right away would be a mistake," Gadreel noted now that he'd been relieved from the initial responsibility, hunched over from the pain in his chest but managing to at least hold his voice together, "He will not be strong enough. He'd just die again. We have to wait for him to heal first, even if he has to do it in a state none of us would wish upon him."

Sam had joined Castiel in looking at Dean and, as if shaken awake by what Gadreel had said, now moved back to the side of the bed. He stood at the edge of the trap and swayed from side to side.  
"He'll kill me if I go in, won't he?" he asked from no one in particular.  
Then he shivered and turned to look at the angels, seeming lost and desperate if such words could give an impression of the depth of the feelings and how they reflected from him.  
"You should go. Both... both of you. I want him to wake to me. I'll be okay. The trap will keep him inside and I'll stay outside, but I just - I don't want it to be _this_."

For the first time since the moment Gadreel had walked into the room, the younger gave him a better, more throughout and more personal look. A hint of a smile crossed the hunter's weary features and warmth leaked into the defeat and sadness in his eyes, and then he looked away again. Yet now there had been relief in him and, if he'd managed to feel anything but during the rough welcome back that he'd been greeted with, suddenly the sentry felt at home and welcome again.  
He laid his hand over Castiel's shoulder and tugged gently.  
"He is right."

 

* * *

 

It took hours for Dean to wake up. About that Gadreel had been wrong: it seemed that the revitalization took more time and effort than the initial poisoning had. But he'd never seen this before, and as such he couldn't be blamed for the miscalculation. Every now and then Sam briefly resurfaced from the older's bedroom to take care of whichever need had grown too urgent for him to ignore but he always returned quickly to the other's side, and every time he came out he was more tired and more determined than before.

Then, at the small hours of the night ticking towards dawn, the Knight finally rose. Both the angels could feel his presence and Castiel seemed to shrink from the agony it caused him, but neither moved to interfere - whatever a gentle start meant to a Knight of Hell was irrelevant. This was to respect Sam's grieving, to give him space and time to adjust on his own terms. Castiel knew well that Sam would inevitably need to sleep sooner rather than later once he'd feel secure about his brother's stability, however bad the situation was, as the battle still weighted upon him. Even though news of victory had been scarcely shared, nothing much had been spoken: the fight against Metatron now seemed like it had happened a long time ago and bore no relevancy to the current struggles they faced.  
In the midst of the two who grieved with everything they were, Gadreel concentrated on worrying for them, as he had the capacity to spare: he'd tried to inquire whether Castiel would try to find out what had happened to his own grace, but the younger seemed entirely uninterested in his own matters, and Gadreel understood it perfectly. This was his family: Dean was everything to him, his best friend, his closest brother and perhaps something else that defied such strict definition. They'd fought together through things that were unheard of and they'd waged those wars through earth, heaven and hell; they'd even survived purgatory together. Watching someone like that turn into what Dean now had was the most painful thing Gadreel could imagine, and he could imagine many painful things indeed - some selfish part of him was relieved that this burden wasn't his to bear as heavily as it was the other's, but the thought was quickly suppressed and promptly rejected. He may not have mourned Dean anywhere like the others did but he was sad, he did feel the loss, and he would have given much to spare all of them from this fate. Dean himself had done nothing to deserve what had happened to him: his worst crimes had been committed out of love and the fear of losing those he loved the most. Such was hardly a flaw to condemn a soul for, much less to a curse like the one that had now claimed his soul.

"I'm glad you're here," Castiel said when the third hour had passed without any sign of Sam.

"I feel as if I was intruding," the older admitted quietly in turn.

Castiel smiled and shook his head.  
"Your intruding might be the anchor we need," he replied softly, heavily, "to not lose ourselves now."


	11. Conflicted

* * *

 

Sam didn't want to walk out, but he was tired of watching Dean crawl around the bed trying to find a weak spot from the trap. He was tired of listening to the angry flood of insults and direct hits to his weakest points, and he was tired simply because he was tired - every bone, every joint in his body ached from being thrown at the wall and into objects for so many times he'd lost count. The only feeling inside him when he wished a good night to this creature that had taken over his brother's place and exited the room to call Castiel in for guard duty was a hollow feeling of relief. Dean wasn't dead. There was something he could do about this. The Mark posed a problem no one knew yet how to solve, but this... this was something they'd dealt with before. He'd cure that corruption that had taken a hold of the older and he'd do it with his own blood even if it would kill him to do so - and it very well might, he realised, because the last time he'd attempted had certainly been a last straw for his body. Then so be it; he didn't mind. But he'd healed since: Gadreel had saved his life and forced him to heal regardless of his own wishes, and once the damage had been done, Castiel had finished the work by continuing the healing to end. If he'd survive, he'd live to fight the next battle - the one that sounded more like his line of work, finding out how to get rid of the Mark once and for all.

These thoughts ran amuck in his mind as he returned to the study to find Castiel and Gadreel from exactly where they'd sat three or four hours ago.  
"I'm off to bed," he stated to no one in particular, feeling nauseous and anxious and so damn exhausted it could have been a result of a sedative, "Cas, if you want to, you can go keep an eye on him. But it's - it's Dean, but it's not - it's not Dean. It's the Dean we've dealt with for weeks intensified a hundredfold and I just want to end today already, so whatever you choose, it's probably going to be as bad."

"I'll guard him," Castiel said immediately, almost cutting Sam off, "We can't risk anything. Gadreel?"

Gadreel raised his head, his eyes appearing somewhat unfocused, misty. He shook his head.  
"I need rest," the sentry said wearily, and Sam noted for a second time how pale he was.  
He appeared shaken and uncomfortable, injured even, but at least he lived. The past day had almost shed whatever had happened the night before from Sam's mind and made room for usual restraint towards the older, but somewhere underneath the layers of discomfort he felt hopeful that the older would have the mind to follow him to Sam's bedroom. Sam hoped he'd know to intrude before Sam himself would be too wise to let him in anymore; no part of the hunter wanted to continue what had began, but the memory of yesterday and the past morning haunted him with a promise of the kind of an intense relief which only a misadventure could provide, a forgetfulness that only resulted from the welcome presence of someone who shouldn't have been there at all.

"Good night," Sam simply said to them both and turned his back.

Both angels followed him.

 

* * *

 

The bedroom door was ajar; Gadreel read it as an invitation and slipped in after the younger, closing the door after entering. Sam cast a glance at him but beyond that there was no recognition of his presence - the hunter pulled off his blood-stained shirt and cast it on the couch, then promptly moved onto taking off his pants without as much as a word.  
Only when he'd stepped back into the grey pants he seemed to use in place for pajamas, presenting the gruesome pattern of red, purple and blue bruises the size of fists clearly around his upper body, he finally turned to address the angel.  
"Turn off the lights."

Gadreel's hand slipped across the switch, and without the bedside lamp they were in near pitch black darkness again. Sam's soul was pulsing; it had an aura of distress, but he was keeping that feeling at bay unusually well. He moved onto the bed and sat cross-legged on it instead of laying down to sleep, and for a while the silence returned again. Then after a while he cast a look in Gadreel's direction and huffed softly, like the previous agitation had broken in him.  
"Come here."  
He shifted to face the other side of the bed as the angel made his way to it, casting aside his jacket from his shoulders and after it the shoes that he'd worn. His knees dug deeper to the mattress than he'd remembered and his balance was here and there before he'd firmly rooted himself upon the soft surface, but then, before he could really get used to any of that, Sam had suddenly taken a hold of his shoulders and when he looked to see what for, he was just as suddenly caught in a kiss that he struggled to remember how to react to. The fight was still in his blood as a fiery burn: every reaction in him one that measured how dangerous, how immediately threatening an act towards him was. This sent his heart racing in a way that was read more than just dangerous - an already in-progress act of violence that for some reason or the other wasn't hurting him - and he gasped for air before finding himself on his back on the bed, Sam's knee pressing onto his hip from one side and then the other as the man climbed on him, pushing him down again just as he'd done before to make sure he wasn't leaving.

"I feel sick," the younger grunted, pressing his face to the side of the older's neck, "Like I shouldn't be here, like I'm not allowed to."

"You have the right."  
Gadreel's arm reached for the younger's neck across his shoulders, finding it underneath a layer of soft, heavy hair that bent against his skin and hung down over the sides of his face, and his fingertips pressed into that area and half-caressed, half-massaged it, each touch sending signals like sparks of electricity into the muscles to relax them even as his own still remained tense from conflict. Sam bent his head down until their foreheads were touching to give him more space to touch, the whole of his body shivering and his lips parted again, but there was an aura of uncertainty about him still.

"What if it doesn't work?" he asked, arms bending to lean onto the bed beneath them to bring together their upper bodies as well; the pressure hurt at first, but as long as Sam wasn't moving, Gadreel wouldn't distract him by any further concerns. It wasn't necessarily a pain he disliked, either; it reminded him how acutely, truly close the younger was now.  
"What if I'm just - what if I'm wrong? I don't know why I want you here, and most of the time, nothing's changed. Then I get tired and the more tired I get the more I need you, and when I'm dull enough to just not think, I bring you here to - God, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm using you."  
His fingertips crossed the older's cheek and drew the outline of his jaw before crossing over onto his ear, into his hair.  
"I just want to be here but I don't feel like I have the right."

"Whose permission are you waiting for beyond that of ours?"

Sam's lips brushed across Gadreel's and he trembled, his aura wavering and locking out but then returning, somehow brighter than it had been before. He slid off from the older's body to his side, one knee staying against the male's hips and the other pressing against his thigh, and his arm crossed the angel's body from just below the lowest cuts that marked the sigil's outline.  
"The ugliest part is that... I know. I _know_ who I'm waiting for. Dean, Cas... Kevin. It's like I need them to forgive you before I can feel safe, and I - I don't know about Cas but the other two? I'm even afraid of saying your name. I feel like if I do, I might actually wake up to what I'm doing."  
He breathed in a shiver that at first was only audible, and then ran across the whole of him like some type of a flash poison.  
"Gadreel."  
They both waited; Gadreel wasn't sure of what, the only thing he was certain of for the moment's time being solely the fact that the sole reason he'd judged his life worth living for was on the brink of rejecting him and that he truly, fully deserved it. He'd never deserved what had developed between them, but he'd held onto it for this day like it was something fundamental about him, like it was a part of who he was, of who he wanted to be, and the first and only track towards the world he wanted to exist in.  
Now that the uncertainty of it was exposed, it hurt - it _burned_ \- but he said nothing; he had no idea how to reason about it when he didn't have the position to argue and no understanding whatsoever of what had taken, or was taking, place here in the first place. It was like the situation had gagged him and turned him into a spectator in this conversation that should have been his to participate in.

"I'm so sorry," Sam finally continued, nose brushing into the older's ear and his breathing in it, "I'm too tired to even - I shouldn't have - how did we end up here?"

"I do not know."

"Yeah. I think... that about sums it up."  
He was warm where he stayed; his hands were gentle, firm and familiar. He wasn't a threat - now that the situation had prolonged, the initial fear response to it had faded away almost entirely. If there was a place Gadreel felt safe, it was here, in this dark room with this soul, the one who knew him, the one who'd listened to him, and who'd still chosen - even if it had been for just this short while - to forgive him for what he'd done and find that same safety with him and to trust him even though he'd never earned that chance to begin with.

"Gadreel?"

"Yes?"

"What do you want? Hell, are you even okay with this?"

Human questions. An angel didn't want anything. An angel wasn't built to be _okay_ with anything; an angel was built to respond, not to adapt, to situations. An angel didn't have a preference, desire, or any other driving force beyond his calling. That was the only reason Gadreel had no idea what to answer the questions, and why he barely knew the context to them certainly enough to attempt. The very idea of voicing something that he wanted for himself now seemed doubly like an insult and he felt himself tensing, locking away from the responsibility altogether.

The silence ticked by for a long while and during that silence Sam pulled more to his own side, judging the older's unease for an unspoken response to his question. It took a moment for Gadreel to find a firm enough connection with his vessel to reach back for him and grab his hand to bring it back over his body; somehow Sam seemed relieved when he did.

"I don't want to lose this, Sam."  
That was the only thing he did know, but the sentence sounded like it perhaps had deeper roots than that. If there was one thing Gadreel excelled at it was almost appearing like he knew what he was doing and what he was talking about - never enough to convince anyone, but just the right amount to conjure doubt.  
"But at the same time, it is not something I can decide. I don't deserve this. I never deserved your forgiveness in the first place. If you truly wanted me to be here, to share this with you, then that would be an act of mercy that I never believed in."

"I don't want it to be mercy, Gadreel."  
Sam was making a point of rooting himself in this reality: he'd never spoken Gadreel's name this often before, as if to make sure he was addressing the angel directly and not some make-believe version of him that fit him better.  
"I want you to want to be here because you do, end of it. I don't want - I don't want to be someone to make up for what you've been through, some kind of a redemption. That's too much responsibility and not... what I feel."

"Then what is it that you want?"

"I don't know."  
Sam laughed. For the first time, he sounded almost happy.  
"It's crazy. I just want this and I don't want anything else, because everything else takes commitment that I don't really - we met weird, right? I wasn't even aware of you. You know everything about me but I feel like I'm just now getting context for the things I learned about you during that time, and I don't know you well enough to actually say this or that, but... at the same time, I just miss this feeling. I miss being here, and when I'm here, I feel like things maybe aren't that bad. That kind of sums up how I felt the whole time you were with me, like I wasn't alone and I didn't mind it, because I was kind of happy I didn't have to be. Like maybe I wasn't digging deep enough because I never really wanted you out, you know? I felt safer that way. And I think - I think that for the first time I..."  
He swallowed and hesitated, looking for the right words.  
"Most of my relationships, they're - I meet people and I love them and they die. But the only thing that can kill you, really, is _you_. It's like for the first time I have this - this possibility to make something that'll last, because I don't have to fear that one day I won't be there to protect you. I know you can do that on your own. I know that I can trust you to survive, hell, _whatever_ , pretty much. That's not something I've ever had, that kind of - security, for once to be able to just... let go of the fear."

Gadreel wished he could have said something to that that would confirm the other's words, but the sigil at his chest stung like the wound had opened again and it leaked with near-crushing guilt at the memory of how close he'd been to forcing the younger to live that same nightmare through again.  
He tried to get rid of the thought and for twenty seconds, he'd already decided to bury it and never let it out again. Then, suddenly, he realised that it was that course of action which had led to where he now was with Dean Winchester. That one decision to cover the truth and to hold onto that disguise when breaking it should have been essential had led to the deaths of too many and, eventually, the creation of a monster as powerful as angels themselves were, and it had nearly killed him too. That one small mistake had almost decimated everything that he'd ever touched and granted Metatron his victory, and here he was about to make the same one again to spare Sam from the truth and himself from the bite of it.

His fingers had gripped the younger's hand and brought it over his chest where the vessel's heart was beating loud and fast again. He was afraid and he knew that Sam had caught up to it by now: the only thing he hoped for was that it would be enough to show him how difficult this was, because one thing Gadreel had learned was that words did him no good.

"Metatron had laid out a trap for us," he began.

 

* * *

 

Sam's fingertips were cold as he reached to undo the older's shirt. The cloth barely wanted to part from the skin; a tearing sound cut through the silence as he gently lifted it from the dried blood and the scabbed cuts. Gadreel was quiet, barely breathing, and his whole body was tense to drive in just how scared he was - Sam didn't know of what, but he didn't know much else at this stage either. There was too much to take in for one day and he only realised how stupid it was when he'd already began to draw out the wounds with his fingers, painting it out just to confirm what it was, even though it had to hurt.  
"Why did you leave it in?"  
The question sprung from some obscure part of his mind that hadn't partaken in whatever he'd consciously been thinking. He felt surprised at it himself, almost as if he'd been stupid to not think it first but he _had_ , because it had been _his_ voice to speak it out. The hour was much too late for this conversation. He'd just wanted to sleep.

"The nature of the sigil," Gadreel replied breathlessly, "is to be unstable. It gathers energy to a single point where, when released, it will cause maximum damage to the surroundings - it was never meant to be carved into an angel, but Metatron realised the potential. We thought it better to not attempt to heal it or otherwise interfere before we can be certain it won't be triggered by accident."

"You can - you can accidentally trigger it?"

"If fire is introduced to oil, what will happen? I am not in danger, Sam, but every precaution counts."

"That sounds like you're in danger."

"I suppose it does."

For a moment, they both just breathed, and Sam hoped he'd known how to deal with the new information. Then he realised he simply lacked the capacity to face it in any other way than this: he was shocked, but he was relieved as well.  
"I'm glad you beat it."

The older turned his head to him and watched him - in the dim light that escaped through the closed door, not much of his expression could be told apart but enough was that Sam knew he looked questioning.

"The trap. You proved that you were harder to kill than Metatron thought. I mean, I almost deserve a 'told you so' for that - but I'm not saying it, because you live. You made it out even though he'd put that thing there just to kill you. And you're here, now, and - and that's all that matters to me. Thanks for telling me, though. I won't bring a blade near you until that thing's healed."

A small, confused smile replaced the expectation on the older's features. Then he sighed, turning back to look at the dark blue ceiling above them, breathing out the tension in his body until he was fully relaxed, something Sam hadn't felt the whole evening yet.  
He reached the back of his palm to press against the older's cheek, and before he could help it, yawned instead of speaking a word.  
"Be there when I wake up," he muttered, head heavy as he landed it on and deep into a pillow.

"I'll be here."


	12. Playing By The Rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not even sorry about the reality check.

* * *

 

When Gadreel next regained consciousness, he did it to the sound of the door closing quietly. He hadn't slept per se, but it had been close: he'd simply slipped to unawareness, the usual state of rest that took him over when he was exhausted but had something to connect to. Now that something had been gone, if only briefly; when he looked, Sam stood there in the light of the reading light with a bag in his hands, watching him with his head tilted and a small smirk on his lips.  
"Morning," the hunter opened a conversation.

Gadreel pushed himself up from the bed, the still partially open hoodie hanging off from his shoulder. He felt dazed and stiff.

"I thought I'd let you be, since I had no idea how long you need to recharge."

"Did you see Dean already?" the angel asked, pulling his knees up to cover his chest as Sam had done on the first night they'd shared the room, perhaps for similar reasons, although the whole array of Gadreel's seemed more complicated than plain insecurity.  
If he'd truly wanted to hide the sigil that was now a scabbed over, sore reminder of the horrors of the previous day, he would have closed the hoodie first. It wasn't about that. He wanted to show that weakness in front of Sam; he wanted to trust him. But revealing it openly wasn't an option either: it made him feel too vulnerable, too fragile, and he didn't know how to bear those feelings.

The younger sat on the bed and laid the bag between them.  
"I did," he said in a dry, heavy voice, "probably doesn't surprise you if I say he's not any better. Cas is with him again, even though he already did imply we might be better off just leaving Dean on his own until we can start. He's not - he's probably saying a hundred and fifty things Dean would never want to share about what he thinks. So it gets... I don't know how I should react to him, or anything he says. He's not lying. He's just - not telling the truth either. He's my brother but he's not my brother. How do you cope with that?"  
As he spoke, Sam was laying first-aid supplies on the bed. Gadreel watched him and the tension in his movements and he could almost smell the hurt on him, as if it wasn't enough that it was plain to see and audible in his words.

"You seem to cope with this better than his death," the angel noted, "I expected it to be the other way around."

Sam shrugged.  
"I guess. I mean, this is something we can fix. This is something I could go in there right now to fix if it wouldn't kill him. Death... I can't fix death. It's not guaranteed that you could, or that Cas could - or even _should -_  fix it. I don't know how to live with that. I've never known. But it's not the same. He's still alive, somehow, he's just sick, and I _will_ heal him."  
He cleared his throat and raised his eyes to examine Gadreel, seemingly decisive that this was the extent of the previous topic of conversation.  
"I was thinking," he continued then in a lighter voice, "that since I can't do anything about him today, I could at least take a look at that instead."  
He reached a hand out to push the angel's knee aside, fingertips reaching to tug at the hoodie's open zipper to reveal more of the cuts.  
"If that's okay with you. Whiskey mixes with oil better than angel mojo, right?"

Gadreel looked away. Then, slowly, he nodded, noticing a shy smile on his lips as he did so - the thought wasn't entirely unpleasant, even if it took an enormous amount of trust.  
"Cleaning it might help the healing," he admitted, turning to face Sam now.  
He did so just in time to see the younger's features lighten up at the notion.

"Great. I mean, I can't really do much else before we start looking into the Mark again."

"Sam," the older sighed, "I know you are in a hurry to help your brother, but you should give yourself some time as well."

"Sorry," Sam replied dully, "this is the way it's gonna be."

Gadreel nodded.  
"I have to say it," he said as the younger wet a cloth with alcohol and prepared to begin cleaning his wounds, "Of course, I've had enough time to understand that it will not change a thing."

Sam laughed, brushed aside his hair and pressed the cloth over the top of the sigil. It burned: the alcohol was fuel to the pain but not so much to the magic that still lingered within the cuts from the presence of grace-contaminated mortal blood. None of that showed from the angel's features but he was holding his breath, and a part of him knew that Sam had probably noticed that. He'd become quite attuned to how his reactions were perceived by outsiders during the long centuries of torture, but here he tried to put all that aside - Sam would not take any joy in his suffering. The worst he'd do would be to withdraw in order to spare him from more.

"I've done a bit of thinking," the hunter spoke after a while as he recovered the bloodied cloth from the older's chest to pour more alcohol over a clean part before continuing, "on what I shouldn't have brought up yesterday at all."  
His hand pressed over Gadreel's other knee and pushed it aside as well, and as he readjusted, moving closer, the intimacy of the moment grew by a level that turned it from casual to something else. They were closer than necessary, but not close enough for it to be inappropriate for the situation, merely leaving them wrapped in a mood that wasn't here nor there, which Gadreel felt was more than well-fitting for the subject Sam had now chosen to replace the one he had no wish to discuss with.  
"I think my worst issue is that I have no idea what you feel."

The hunter watched the absent, crooked smile appear and vanish from the other's features before Gadreel sighed and raised his eyes to him again.  
"You are not alone in that."  
The angel thought for a moment, and Sam, despite the fact that he'd resumed cleaning the wound and the surrounding swollen skin with the cloth again, was watching him expectingly.  
"Nor are you alone in _this_ , whatever its definition. I do enjoy it; I wish it would continue. I prefer your company to that of others, even that of my family when it is not hostile, and I feel I connect with you more than I do with anyone else. I prefer closeness with you to distance, and what we've shared these past days has meant much to me. Above all else, it is hard for me to tell you what I feel about you, but you are important - irreplaceable, a priority - to me. I would do much to make sure that you feel secure and content, and if I could do more, then it would be an honour."

An amused expression flashed across Sam's face, but he concealed it soon enough and concentrated, now entirely serious, upon the wound for a short while. Slowly and uncertainly Gadreel reached for the younger's shoulder, and to his surprise Sam leaned into the touch with his head until his ear was touching the back of Gadreel's hand and then stayed there as if resting although the pose was anything but relaxed.  
He was breathing in and out deep and slow, sometimes huffing or sighing as he continued his work but mostly seeming exactly what Gadreel had expressed a wish for him to be: secure and content. When he finally spoke, he seemed to have reached a sense of peace in the struggle with his inner conflicts.  
"So I'm special?" Sam asked calmly.

"I've never related to anyone like this. Yes, you are special."

Sam nodded, his head finally up again from leaning over onto Gadreel's hand.  
"I guess that's clear enough, coming from an angel."  
He switched the wet, brown-red cloth to a clean white one and spread some thick cream over it, which he then patted over the cuts, lost in thought but not seeming burdened by whatever it was that he was thinking. When he was finished he sighed, stretched his neck and repacked the supplies he'd used and once the bed was clean and the two used cloths in the trash he sat down again, dropped the bag on the floor and aimed a look and a smile towards Gadreel.  
"I have no idea what's happening between us, but if I'm honest with you I like it, and I'd like to keep it."

Gadreel nodded, unsure what would follow but nevertheless satisfied with what he'd already heard. The younger reached a hand over the back of his neck and pulled him close until their foreheads and noses touched again, and he stayed there, eyes closed and just breathing, for a little while as if to suck in the courage he needed to finish what he was saying.  
The words never came: in their stead was a sequence of huffs, swallows and lone chuckles, accompanied by a confused shake of the younger's head before he pressed his lips into the older's and drowned out the need for anything else.  
He was careful not touch Gadreel's chest when he pushed the angel down on the bed and climbed on top of him again, but this time his hands were firm and confident as they locked the older's wrists on both sides of the pillow. It should have triggered something inside Gadreel, but it was as if he'd momentarily forgotten how to feel fear - instead, he just felt safe, first and foremost from himself but also from the rest of the world, like Sam wasn't so much holding him down as he was holding onto him to keep him away from the reality that still lurked outside somewhere.

 

* * *

 

The angel fell on the bed without much resistance whatsoever: it surprised Sam, but he was happy for it just the same. It felt like a permission for what he was doing, and when he pushed it, the other still seemed content and trusting and relaxed in his hold.  
His lips slipped from Gadreel's mouth to his jaw again, tracking the stubbled shape down over to the neck, his mind full of static and body feeling like it was tingling from head to toe out of pure barely held-back excitement, like this was something he'd waited for all along and now that he was here...

The older's scent was warm and comforting and it surrounded him completely, even with the occasional waft of the alcohol he'd wiped the wounds clean with. The latter felt like a terrifying reminder of the fact that this had been very close to not being; the concept of being almost solely responsible for the fact that it was was making Sam dizzy and he tried to ignore it, lock it out of his mind. He wasn't half-certain of what he wanted but when his hand parted from over the other's wrist, the freed fingertips kept repeatedly tracing the shape of the angel's exposed shoulder, pushing under the still crookedly hanging, soft cloth that revealed the shape from underneath while on the other side the hood pushed directly against the other's neck, hiding the whole shoulder from view. There was no shirt underneath that one at all anymore, and Sam wasn't sure if it had been there the day before. He was almost certain it hadn't; either Gadreel had removed it before cutting the sigil into his flesh or he'd done so afterwards, Sam couldn't know for certain. The fact remained that for the first time Sam was touching his skin directly from another part than his hand or his face and neck, and somehow now that he realised it, the knowledge made him feel drunk and even dizzier than he'd been before. His lips moved down from the other's neck to the pit between his collarbones and the journey was met by a quiet, surprised sound and the angel's body arching to press more firmly against his. The cream Sam had covered the male's chest with tasted dull and stuck to his shirt even though he tried to avoid touching it wherever possible; it would absorb quickly, being only there to prevent the alcohol from drying the skin and the wounds, but for now, it was still very much present and slowing down whatever Sam had been that close to deciding upon.  
Almost unwillingly he pulled up, one hand still leaning over to the other's wrist, to find Gadreel's freed hand from over his waist, flat and warm and quite firm as if implying he should stay where he was - exactly, precisely where he was.  
The warm light of the lamp made the younger feel exposed somehow - like he'd preferred it off - when their eyes met. Gadreel's lips were parted; he seemed more than perfectly fine with Sam unceremoniously pouncing him.

This was oddly exciting, even arousing: to see him there, pressed against the mattress by nothing but Sam's weight and strength, wounded, vulnerable. It differed so drastically from everything Sam had learned to associate with Gadreel - there was no fight in him now. Just knowing how much trust it took, and how little he would have to push to cross the line, took his breath away and left him aching in more ways than he wanted to count, and now his lips were parted just the same, breath crossing between them heavy and strained.  
He leaned back down again to kiss the angel on his mouth, this time slower, somewhat challenging, pressing, as if trying to dig a reaction out of him. Of course he got none - at least none beyond the response in the same manner, not even when he nipped at the male's lower lip. He had no idea what he wanted, but at this stage it was clear he wanted something; he wanted out of the stress and he wanted the pressure out from inside him, he wanted to drown into the moment and forget the hell that reigned outside. The only problem was that this wasn't a usual situation by any means. He had no clue how far he was allowed to push it, and he had no idea what to do if he'd slip from what had turned into a trial at foreplay to anything beyond the fine line. It was ridiculous, not having a clue what to do with a male when he was one himself, but the more pressing problem was that Gadreel was an angel, and he had an unspeakable history that further complicated the already difficult grounds laid out for Sam's exploration.

He wanted to turn off the light and forget all of that.

"Do you mind if I put the light out?"

"Not at all."

 

* * *

 

Gadreel didn't know much about making love. He knew everything, on a technical level, about mating and the sexual habits that people had developed around it - but he'd never paid much attention, never cared to know why it mattered so much, how it worked in practice with the fine nuances of individual relationships and personalities playing into its forms. He'd thought he knew enough. Now he wished he'd learned the things he'd deemed unnecessary, irrelevant to angels, as it would have certainly given him some form of a roadmap along this path.  
He didn't know how to navigate here, or even where he was headed for. He didn't even know what he wanted - what he didn't want. It was a mess, but like a swiftly coursing river: impossible to stop now that it was moving along.

And if the situation was a river, then Sam Winchester was the water in it. He wasn't rough, not like Gadreel knew he was used to being, but he was firm and confident; his touches were calculated, gentle and seemed to be building a different kind of a map from the one Gadreel wanted to have for himself. Clearly, Sam had that one in his mind, if not as vividly as he'd wished then at least as roadsigns, as markers and milestones. The angel simply laid there, hands wherever, usually where they shouldn't have been, eyes more often stuck on some irrelevant detail than following the other. Sam felt warm, good where he was, but he had a fire that Gadreel didn't have, some kind of a burn that drove him on and gave his touches and movements and actions that certain kind of a glow and energy that the angel couldn't even recognise in himself.  
The younger's palms slid over the front of his shirt, undoing the zipper in full and pushing the cloth apart to reveal the body underneath, and his mouth was over the older's navel, marking down a path from there until the very edge of the jeans, and he was doing a good job at turning himself on, it was clear from his whole self. The more he wanted it - the more he pushed into Gadreel's clumsy touches, the caressing of the angel's hand in his hair and over his neck - the more ashamed the older was that he didn't feel that, that nothing in this was doing to him what it should have done to any human being, like he lacked that particular ability to feel aroused in the first place.

But the kisses - the kisses he loved. The ones that landed over his jaw, over his cheeks, his forehead, his neck - they all felt like nothing he'd ever had, but the ones he could join into and the ones he could start made him feel like the spell locking up Heaven had been undone and all that strength was pouring into him freely again. Those he participated in with growing eagerness, and to his surprise, minor relief and slight shock, found his body responding to. What the touches couldn't achieve the sheer connection between them was tempting, but there was more to this than just the ability to join in. He didn't have a permission.

A quiet, lost huff parted from the younger's lips. He pulled back, hips landing over Gadreel's again, and his hand pressed against the older's stomach lightly and gently, the other hanging relaxed by the man's side.  
"I'm - sorry," Sam breathed, "I don't know - am I - how do you feel?"

Gadreel's palm slid over his arm and stayed; he listened to the other's heavy, tense breathing for a while before he could form an answer.  
"Don't apologise," he finally said, "Perhaps I should."

"For what?"

A silence.  
"I'm not certain."

"Yeah."  
Sam laughed.  
"Yeah, me neither."  
He leaned down for a light kiss, staying in that odd pose to lean his head over Gadreel's, their noses pressing side by side and breath tickling both on the cheek.  
"I don't know if you want that."

"I did not mind it."  
Gadreel swallowed, shifted.  
"I do not know if this is something my vessel would consent to."

A small, shocked breath parted from the younger's lips and he backed off - not off the male's body per se, but back where he'd started from again.  
"Oh - oh God. I forgot. Goddamnit, I forgot."

"You've not broken anyone's consent, if you worry about that. He is not present here with us, either. Unlike how it was for you, I have a better, firmer control over what he experiences and what he does not, as I do not need to conceal myself."

"I'm an idiot."

"No - Sam."  
Gadreel's hand still stayed upon the younger's, holding him in place even though he'd implied a desire to move away.  
"You have done nothing wrong."


	13. Met Someone

* * *

 

The bar's interior was dusty - the man sat at the corner on a stool, barely lifted his gaze when Gadreel entered. His fingers determinedly turned page on the thick book in front of him, as if on a mission: his eyes returned upon the text just the same.  
"I thought you were busy outside," the soul said with a hint of a smile, tracing a line from the book with his fingertips before closing the book, "but now that you're here, can I make a request?"

"Anything," Gadreel replied, stopping to stand nearby him, "as you well know. I will do what I can."

"Well, it's not a very complex request. Just - read a book. Horror or crime, or something off the current best seller list. I'm running out. Most of these things I just remember too well, I need something new."

Gadreel nodded.  
"I'll see it done," he replied gently.

"So, what's the big topic? Why're you here?"

"A clarification, and an apology."

"An apology? What for? Sit down."

Gadreel sat down. His hands - pearly, see-through almost, like a constellation wearing star dust for skin and shape - slid along the table.  
"I almost made a decision," he started, "that would have resulted in your death, and I did not ask for permission to do so. I was not thinking clearly."

"I sensed we were in trouble," the man replied dully but with almost a cheerful undertone to his voice, "I'm glad to know you survived. As for myself, I guess I have to be glad that I'm still - here, if what you said about the passage of souls is true."

"It still stands as true. Your way to your own Heaven would have been more difficult than it should be. I'm still hoping you can pass without problem once the time comes."

"So, apology accepted. That was the apology, right?"

Gadreel nodded.

"So what's the clarification?"

"I've met someone."

"You've met someone."  
The soul looked at him for a fleeting moment before clarity struck him and he chuckled in surprise.  
"Christ, you mean - you mean you've _met_ someone? In my skin?"

The next nod was hesitant, timid.

"Run," the man laughed, "You're in for trouble. I didn't know angels dated. I didn't know _you_ were interested."

"You sound like it does not bother you."

"It's hilarious."  
The man shifted the book in front of him, pushed it to the side and leaned forwards towards Gadreel.  
"Does she know you're not human?"

Outside the mindspace, Gadreel was blushing.

"He does."

"Oh."

"It's complicated."

"Isn't it always?" the soul asked, leaning back again.  
He still wore half a grin on him, as if the situation was throughoutly entertaining to him.  
"But what the hell does this have to do with me? If you're asking for dating advice - I can't really help, and don't even think about asking me to do it for you."

"No, that is - that is not what I need clarification for."

"Right. _Right_ , clarification."

"This does not fall under what I asked of you when you gave your consent to me."

The man thought for a second, then shrugged.  
"Well," he sighed then, "if you think I have more issue with you providing my meat with comfort and care than I have with getting beaten, cut and burned, then your idea of my priorities is somewhat awfully scewed. Consent extended. Get laid, Gadreel."

 

* * *

 

Sam couldn't stop shivering. He washed his arms, his thighs, his stomach and faced the flow of hot water to welcome it on his body over and over again, but the feeling didn't wash off. He dried off feeling empty and disappointed and headed off to take a few insults from his extremely angry, frustrated and very much trapped and dead brother. It did nothing to cheer him up, and Castiel spoke not a word during the whole encounter, even though he stayed in the room with them.  
When Sam was about to leave, the angel followed him out and stopped him in the corridor, and for the first time Sam was now looking at him so that he could see him, and what he saw didn't look entirely too good.

"I have to leave, Sam. I'm sorry. I'm running out of time. Out of - grace."  
He was ashamed, perhaps of his weakness. It hardly mattered. Sam didn't want that. Everyone in the bunker seemed to exist in a never-ending loop of guilt, shame and exhaustion.

"It's okay," he heard himself say, even though it wasn't okay, because Castiel was the only thing in the world that wasn't a problem for him - now he suddenly realised that the illusion was just that, an illusion.  
Castiel was a problem. Not his: he wouldn't, wasn't, and couldn't be expected to fix Castiel, but the problem still existed, and it was one that was facing its deadline faster than any of them would have liked.  
"Tell me if I can - if there's something I can do."

The angel shook his head dejectedly.  
"Just take care of Dean," he said, "I will try to find out a solution. If I can't - if I can't, then I will come back here, and we'll take a look at the options."

"Options? Cas -"

"Not now, Sam. You are a good friend."  
Castiel's smile was tired. The loop went on.  
"Gadreel should stay here - it won't be safe for him to enter Heaven."

"I know."  
Sam sighed, looking away.  
"I'll keep him on a leash."

"Sam - about him."

"Yeah?"

"You are - you are alright with him here, are you not?"  
The older's voice sounded concerned and embarrassed. The loop went on.

"Yeah. Yeah, he's - we've talked. We're okay."

"Good."  
Castiel hesitated.  
"I - I came looking for you, the night before - I have to ask, but I don't know how."

"God."

"I was worried, Sam. I couldn't find him. He was supposed to be there. So I looked - and I worried that - that maybe we'd - I didn't trust him. I didn't trust him with _you_. And - Sam, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have."

Sam shook his head, wondering if he should add regret to the loop's cycle as a milestone.  
"I'm not sure," he stated then, as truthfully as he could, "what's going on. But it's - as I said, we spoke. We're not exactly done talking yet. It's under control, whatever it is."

Castiel nodded.  
"I'm worried for you," he said then, brows knitting closer, "I don't know how to say these things. I just hope it's what you want, Sam, and not something you... Sometimes people go back to the things that hurt them. And I don't want that to happen to you."

"He's not hurting me."

"What happened between you is almost unprecedented, Sam. Something like that does damage, and when I saw you together, it was the first thing I thought. With all of this going on, I just want you to make sure it's -"

"I'm in love, Cas."  
A shocked silence followed.  
"I'm - I love him. That's it. There's nothing else to it. Now whether it's because I think I know him, because I'm fundamentally broken, or because we're both messes and I'm drawn to that, I don't really care. What I do know is that you don't have to worry about it. I'm not hurting. He's not hurting. It's the only thing that keeps me breathing right now and if it's because I'm repeating a trauma, then I don't think it really matters, because if I stop doing it, if I push him away because of what happened or whatever, I'm alone, Cas. And that's something I can't take, not now."

The seraph watched him carefully before sighing and turning his eyes away.  
"I wish you didn't feel that way."

"It's none of your business. I'm sorry, but it really isn't."

Castiel nodded.  
"I know."  
He sighed, and then, suddenly, reached to hug the taller.  
"I know. I'm sorry, Sam."

Sam wrapped his arm around the other and sighed, pressing his chin against the angel's shoulder and letting him hang on for as long as he liked, which as usual was much longer than he'd initially expected.  
"You're worried. I get that. I'm just tired of people policing what I feel and who I choose to let in my life."

"I understand."  
Finally, they parted.  
"He's my brother, Sam. I don't want any bad for him either and if this is something that will help you both heal, I couldn't be happier. I'm just concerned. But you're right, you know him better than I do, and you know yourself better than anyone does. You know what's best for you."

 

* * *

 

The rain was soothing somehow. It seemed to define the week; despite the previous day's sunshine the evening was stormy again, and as Gadreel stood outside the bunker he felt comforted by the lack of calm in the world surrounding him. It matched perfectly the mood that reigned indoors, the situation he was caught up in, and the typhoon that raged inside him alone and privately. Sam had greeted him with nothing but a long gaze as he'd crossed through the study, and Gadreel hadn't asked him what he was thinking. Being reminded of the fact that he wasn't the flesh that he wore had had an impact on Sam and Gadreel imagined it better to let him deal with it on his own time; if it would affect them, then there was nothing that Gadreel could do about it. He was a being of a different realm, unfit to interact with most of this one in his true form, and entirely unable to do it with humans without taking a physical shape. Sadly, there were no empty bodies - every last one of them belonged to someone, and he could only take over one if the soul it belonged to granted him access. He'd done it dubiously before and learned his lesson; that was the last violation that he would commit in the matter. His first possession was by the rules and he'd been lucky with it: the man who'd granted him permission had a good heart and a soul that longed for rest and solitude more than anything. His life had been constant fighting even before Gadreel had fallen; after struggling with his decision for the time it took him to accept the situation, he'd been relieved to let go. Now he was as happy as he would be with his books in the world of his own creation, and Gadreel had promised - a promise that he intended to keep - that if there was a time when his consent no longer stood, a time when he wished to return to his old life, he could freely do so. The man had told him he didn't think that likely, that if he could exist in that silence for the rest of eternity it would suit him well. He was healing, but Gadreel was inclined to agree; he'd probably no longer need a vessel by the time the human be ready to return, and perhaps he would rather choose to die than do so at the end. It had been very close that he hadn't ended his life on his own terms before - a stroke of luck on more than one occasion, and he had the scars and the debts to prove it.

Sam, of course, knew none of this. To him the man that had pledged his body to Gadreel could have been anyone and the whole story would never be revealed to him: the man's history, his reasons for his decision, were private and only between him and Gadreel. Whether Sam would be able to trust Gadreel's word on the matter was something that the angel couldn't change, and even if he would, he might still not be comfortable again to return to how things had been. The reality of the situation ached inside Gadreel, but it wasn't up to him. He had no choice.

The heavy door creaked and opened to the rainy evening, as if the hunter had been summoned by the angel's thoughts. He was holding a cup of coffee in both hands and reached to give the other to Gadreel, who accepted with a small surprised smile on his face.

"You're wet," Sam pointed out the obvious.

"You'll be as wet in minutes."

"Somehow I don't care."

They stood there with Sam's foot between the door to stop it from closing even though as always he was carrying the key, and his eyes lingered upon the grey horizon, the road and the rain with both their hands wrapped around the warm mugs, and neither spoke for the time being. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence although it had the undertone to it, but rather a heavy but welcome one, a thoughtful herald to conversation. Gadreel felt the other's presence there and the warmth that radiated from Sam's body towards his and knowing - feeling - him that close was everything he needed. Sam sipped from his cup and lowered it again, and Gadreel followed example. Drops of water were landing in their coffees.

"I spoke with him," Gadreel began.

"Wh-... oh."  
Another silence.  
"I'm not sure if I want to imagine that conversation," Sam continued then, a warm tone masking the conflict in his voice.

Gadreel found himself smiling, but he hesitated to continue - the words weren't coming to him naturally.

"How does that even work?" Sam asked him after a moment in the gentle white noise filling in the moments when neither spoke.

"He's in a dream like you were. It is different - more vivid, more controlled, more complex, because we both can build it. That was his choice. He is in control of it, and has no connection to what happens outside of it, again by his own choice. If I wish to speak with him, I have to go to that world he has created, take a form that he is comfortable with, and exist as a part of that world for the time it takes."

"What do you look like?"

"Myself. He can see angels. He's one of the few."

"And he's - comfortable with that? I thought angels aren't exactly the most _comforting_ thing to look at."

Gadreel shook his head.  
"In the form of messengers we almost look human," he explained, "It is a contained shape, something more easily taken in by mortals. I believe there are descriptions of us appearing to humans in that form in your scriptures."

"Less heads, more marble. Something like that."

"Something like that," Gadreel repeated, "It was the shape I took when I first spoke to him."

"Does he know who you are?"

"He does."  
The smile that lingered upon the angel's features had little to do with the question and a lot to do with the fact that both men had asked him almost the same question.  
"I tried to avoid the question, but he persisted, and I was desperate."

Sam nodded.

"He never judged me," Gadreel continued, "but he knew my name, and I know he was disappointed at first; that out of all angels, of course it had to be someone like myself who would approach him. He's wrong. He is a good man. His bad luck never seems to lift, however."

"Good people tend to attract bad luck."

Gadreel nodded.  
"So it would seem."

"So what'd he say?"

"He asked me if I truly believe he'd object to kindness when he's already agreed to suffer pain and death for me. I suppose he is right, and it is a strange concern to have."

"Really?"

Gadreel looked at Sam questioningly, uncertain what part the question aimed for.

"I mean, he knows - he kn-... what _does_ he know?"

"That I've met a man who'd love me if I only had the permission to let him."

The angel didn't expect the rough kiss that pushed him against the wet cement of the building behind him. The coffee was warm as it leaked over the cup's edges and onto his hand that held it away from their bodies.  
"I want you," the younger uttered desperately against his mouth, " _I want you._ "


	14. To Need

* * *

 

"I feel so damn ashamed."  
The godsdamned loop.  
He was in his underwear, t-shirt hanging crookedly upon his shoulders and boxers only there because he was suddenly 16 and too shy to take them off. His hand was in his hair, running through twice before stopping to grab a handful of the moist, thick strands, and he shivered as he stood there, breathless and aching.  
"I don't know if I should - if this is a good time."

He loved the warm light of the small lamp. He loved it. He loved how it turned the older's skin golden, how it highlighted the thousand freckles on his shoulders, and how it made everything look softer and more uniform. He loved the warmth of the room, the fact that he was so close to making the decision that would end the whole of this, and he loved the excitement, the hesitation. He loved the way the angel looked - loved the goddamn creature itself. But he was ashamed; somewhere beyond a couple walls, a room and a corridor, his brother was dead and broken and suffering, and he was here doing whatever the hell it was he was trying to do, and out there, somewhere much further, his best friend was dying.  
Now was not the time, but his body ached and his insides burned and he wanted, _needed_ , it so badly it was killing him.

Two empty coffee mugs sat by the lamp, and the bandages across Gadreel's chest made him look like he was almost fully dressed still, even with his belt open and the lost look on him that had earlier made him look so exposed and naked under Sam's touches. Now wasn't the time to hesitate either.  
The younger stepped forth, brought his hands over the other's face and kissed him, climbing onto his lap and pressing his hips down into the rough fabric of the front of the jeans.

"You okay?" he breathed, eyes closed.

"I am."

"Good to continue?"

"If you are sure this is what you want."

Sam nodded.  
"I can't stop anymore either way. I mean, the only way I can is if you tell me to. I don't - I lost that ability a while back. I just need to feel like I matter to someone. Like I'm not just... like I matter."

"You matter."

"Show me."

Nothing felt better than Gadreel learning with him. It was so satisfying, so utterly overwhelming, to feel his lips trace the map Sam had taught him with his own kisses, and to watch him slowly grow more confident, more determined, to make him enjoy it. Sam had already noticed that his non-verbal feedback encouraged the other almost as much as his verbal feedback did - he wasn't used to speaking as much as he did with Gadreel, so the news were good for his own comfort.  
Occasionally - like now that the sentry's lips crossed his neck and he just couldn't get enough of the feel of him over his collarbones which were barely exposed from under the manhandled shirt - he still spoke, if those solitary words could be counted as speech. He begged, mainly; 'stay' and 'please', sometimes 'you're so good to me', but that was the longest he could manage.  
And he felt that way, too. Those weren't just words. They weren't even just something he said to comment how something that happened now felt like - each uttered word had a double meaning.

_Don't go away. You give me everything I need and ask for so little for yourself._

He wanted to ask why and he wanted to push the older down on the bed and bite him and scratch him and bruise him, but instead he pressed his hips down again and again until it wasn't just pushing anymore but needy grinding instead, and his body ached more and more with each movement, each lingering kiss, each clumsy nip and touch that he received from the other.

"You're beautiful," the angel spoke into his ear, so close that the voice sent an electric jolt through the man's body.  
"But I don't know what to do."

Sam laughed.  
"And you think that I do?"

 

* * *

 

Their bodies were the same size, same strength. The rough fabric of the bandages that protected the cuts over Gadreel's chest was the only thing that separated them as Sam lay down over him, mouth on his, teeth on him, all of him on him. The body worked with surprisingly accurate instinct: Gadreel never noticed himself letting the other between his legs or his thighs pressing against Sam's hips for balance and an ounce of control. He did notice himself rising to greet the touch on him, but the feeling was too strong and he leaned back down quickly; Sam noticed it and didn't push him into taking more. He relaxed fast, finding that he enjoyed feeling the younger's pleasure much more than he enjoyed any direct stimulation of his own body, and this discovery opened up an array of potential for him as well: now that he knew what he wanted, he started exploring different ways to get more of it. It was a relief to learn that he didn't need to _need_ , that it was enough that he enjoyed giving, participating, and Sam was much too starved for affection to question it. Whenever Gadreel pulled away from his touch, he only made sure to replace it with something he knew the older enjoyed - the kisses, the affectionate touching of the areas he'd already learned to cause the other's body to bend into his for more, and the words that praised how good he felt and how much Sam wanted him to be there. Although Gadreel still didn't know what arousal should have felt like, and even though his body was uneager in its response to what seemed to drive Sam into a state of euphoria that wasn't only limited to his body or his mind alone, he enjoyed what they shared much more than he'd expected. He wasn't just there because it was something that Sam wanted. He was there because it was something he craved, if not in the same way that Sam did; it felt like something that was healing wounds much older in him than those he'd carved into himself two nights earlier.

"I love you."  
The words were barely more than gasps with Sam's teeth breaking the form of the syllables as he nipped the older's ear, then his neck.  
"I shouldn't but I do. I do."  
He breathed, hid his face into Gadreel's hair.  
"I'm so sorry."  
His body pressed closer, knees digging into the older's thighs, hard sex pressed right alongside the other's now that there were no clothes to guard the distance.  
"I love you and I'm sorry."

"You promised," the angel breathed, shivering but otherwise still, "not to apologise."

"I'm sorry," the younger said and laughed, shivering just the same.  
"I can't stop. It's the only thing I know how to say. I love you, and I'm sorry. I don't know how it happened. I love you."  
The next bite hurt, but Gadreel exposed more of his neck to the other and for the first time in his life welcomed the pain as something else than punishment.

Just as well he welcomed and encouraged the movements and the occasionally painful, bruising adjustments of Sam's body against him; little by little he felt the other's self-control, the care with which he'd initially set to loving him, slip away to a more primal, instinct-driven flow and rhythm. He lifted his leg around the hunter's body to help him keep balance, wound his arms to support him just the same and gave himself up to the moment in everything that it was - he trusted Sam to know, even if he'd sworn he didn't, because all evidence pointed towards contradiction and there was nothing that he feared or had to fight here. It was dizzying, at times humiliating but for the main part just intensely exciting and fulfilling to feel how the younger was climbing closer and closer to his limits, and as Sam's breathing quickened and became an occasional deep gasp or a half-vocal sigh or a huff of pure pleasure, Gadreel noticed his own doing the same, and not solely because he was mirroring the mood set between them. The vessel's blood felt like it was burning, its course through him fast and filled to the brim with information that overcrowded his subconscious mind, and he gave up on tracking it - he gave up on tracking the pulse, the hormones, all of it, because the combination of caring and living at once had now become impossible, bothersome, a burden. His fingertips curved to the hunter's flesh and even though he tried to at least keep that from happening, he still occasionally found his nails marking Sam's skin for a reason he couldn't understand - somehow, it seemed to happen naturally if he relaxed too much, like it somehow belonged to the act, the process. 

"I love you," Sam muttered again, holding his breath between each word as if afraid he'd lose it if he'd allow it to flow naturally.

Gadreel nodded, his face somewhere by the other's shoulder, the nape of his neck. He closed his eyes and relaxed his hands and lifted his hips into Sam's, no conscious thought involved in the act but knowing,  _feeling_ , that it was exactly what the younger wanted of him. As a reward, Sam's teeth buried into his neck so hard he could feel it bruise, and the sound that the man let out as his body gave into the pleasure was almost like a howl muffled by the flesh that he was still holding onto.

 

* * *

 

Sam didn't know what to do, so he buried his head deeper into the older's chest, hoping it wasn't rubbing at the wounds but at the same time fairly certain his forehead was high enough to press against the male's collarbones and therefore no part of him should have been touching the injury.  
His breathing was slowly beginning to settle even though his muscles still burned from the mess he'd made of them with his heated, careless drive for pleasure that had controlled him like a foreign force and for the while turned his mind to a completely blank state. The sticky wetness upon his stomach and, strangely, his thigh was turning cold and rubbing onto the other's body. He didn't even know what to say - how to ask if Gadreel was alright, if he'd enjoyed it. He only knew he'd been the only one to reach climax, but the male's body language didn't imply any tension or fear, and the conflicting messages weren't helped by the fact that he hadn't been erect at the time Sam had briefly forgotten to care.  
The angel's hand stroked his shoulder gently and calmly and his breathing was still a little fast as well, although by far not to the extent that Sam's was; he seemed to be content, at ease.

It took all of the younger's self-control to not apologise again, even though there might have been a reason to do so now; he couldn't, at least not before he was certain of the need.  
"Thank you," he heard himself say instead, and his tone carried the uncertainty in him.  
He felt the older's fingers cross into his hair and push them back, and then he felt a kiss upon his forehead; Gadreel turned and brought his knee back over Sam's legs, and in that embrace the younger felt small and vulnerable. It wasn't a bad feeling. It was strangely welcome - it made him feel less anxious.

"Was I any good?" the older asked, his tone curious and warm and not as insecure as the words implied.

Sam chuckled, nodding.  
"You were great. I have no idea what just happened but you were great."  
He shifted, bringing his arm under the older's until his fingertips could trace the shape of the male's shoulder blade.  
"I guess I needed that quite a bit."

"You seemed to enjoy it."

"Did you?"

Sam felt the nod against the top of his head, but waited for the verbal answer that he hoped was coming. He had to wait for a longer while but then, finally, the other spoke.

"I enjoyed it a lot," Gadreel said, sounding confident yet thoughtful, "It was unlike anything I've shared with others before. Overwhelming. Intimate."

"Yeah, I've - I haven't really had anything like this before, either. I'm seriously not sure if I just had sex or reached some kind of enlightenment, or both."

The angel chuckled, then sighed; his arm wrapped around Sam's body tighter and his fingertips rubbed the man's scalp under the thick, long hair. For a long while his breathing sounded like he was trying to choose words to use it for but he never seemed to find any, and seconds turned into minutes during which the younger felt the usual heaviness spread into his limbs as his mind grew duller and empty of thought. In a while he forced himself to turn on his back and sit up - even if the sheets could still grudgingly take another night, his body felt filthy with sweat and saliva and semen stuck to it.  
"Come take a shower with me," he prompted the older with a tired smile, "We both need it."

Gadreel nodded. He sat up and allowed Sam to remove the bandages from around his chest, finally exposing the bit of skin that had been protected for the whole of the evening and a better part of the day as well. There was something oddly erotic about it, even now that Sam mostly wanted to get ready for sleep - if it hadn't taken so much from him personally, he would have gone for another round right away, but tempting Gadreel into joining took a lot of effort that he rather saved for a time when he had the spark in him instead of this longing emptiness which could as well be filled with closeness and words alone.  
He was happy with this; with what they'd shared, and how they'd shared it. Still a part of him hoped that it wouldn't always be this hard, and that at one point or another the older would want to take initiative. He'd already learned a lot and if Sam could judge by the manner in which he'd taken to kissing, the rest would follow naturally sooner or later.

"Would you do that again?" he asked as he stood up, wrapping the bandage into an untidy pile that he'd throw in the laundry later.

"I would love to."

"Yeah?"

Gadreel tilted his head and squinted at the younger - the usual questioning stance.

"I'm just worried that maybe - maybe that wasn't what you wanted, or maybe I wasn't very good with you. I didn't get you... I couldn't make you come, and that's - I mean - you don't _have_ to, I just, I guess I expected it, and I want you to tell me if it was because of me or because - maybe you just aren't into men, I don't know. Something."

"There was nothing wrong with it, Sam. You did nothing wrong. I'm sorry if I disappointed you."

"You didn't - that's - that's not it."  
If Sam had taken a step towards the door, it was undone now; he sat back down on the bed and brought his hand to the older's cheek, and as he'd almost learned to expect by now Gadreel leaned into that touch, eyes keen upon his.  
"I just want you to tell me what you want."

The older nodded slowly, looking like he was considering the other's words.  
"I will have to think about that," he finally said.

"That's okay. No need to rush. I'm glad you liked it, anyway."

Now the angel's nod was more confident, more defined.  
"I enjoyed it a lot, Sam. I truly did, even if I did not know how to properly communicate it, and if my body did not respond in the way that would be appropriate. I did not feel like I was not getting what I needed. I'd say it was the opposite."

 

* * *

 

Showering together wasn't ideal for saving water; they stayed under the flow for ages, body against body, hands travelling one another's shape barely imitating washing for the main part. They stole watery kisses from one another, Sam leaning his weight onto Gadreel to spare what energy he had left, half-hard the whole time but seemingly determined to ignore the fact. Gadreel noted it - it was impossible to miss - and for a while he played that game with Sam where they both pretended not to notice, but after a while when the hot water, the slippery touches and the sliding of skin against skin had done what they probably had been guaranteed to, the angel pushed the man against the wall of the shower and allowed his hand to drop down between them and press against the other's sex, prompting a deep, low growl out of Sam as he closed his eyes and raised his hips to encourage the touch.

"You don't have to," the hunter noted, his voice broken and hoarse and breathless, but Gadreel simply shook his head, a response that Sam most likely missed with his eyes still shut.  
The older's fingers learned quickly to run along the shaft, palm often pressing the tip against the man's abdomen like he knew Sam did when he was on his own. He was trying to pretend that he wasn't using the memories to help him please the younger, but Sam appeared to have dropped the case - his head was rubbing against the tiles of the wall behind him, back arched and unable to decide whether he wanted his hips pressed into the touch or relaxed to just take it, and not a part of him appeared shamed or bothered by the fact that Gadreel knew the drill all too well to be doing it for the first time. Little by little the angel gave up on holding back: the moans, the shivers and the jerks of the other's hips against his grip were more than enough reward for what he was doing, and since there was nothing telling him to stop or reinforcing the guilt that he was battling, he saw no reason to not give Sam the best he could. His lips pressed against the younger's neck, sliding against the wetness of it, and soon enough his tongue joined them - the water made him taste fresh and it made moving along his skin so easy it wasn't a task at all to make the kisses feel like he knew what he was doing. And perhaps, he realised, perhaps he was starting to get it. At least here with his thigh pressed between Sam's legs and his both hands trapped just that much above it, moving, gripping and sliding along the curves he'd learned to know without ever meaning to and while trying hard to not pay attention to, he felt like he wasn't lost anymore. He felt, suddenly, that he was good at what he was doing, perhaps for the first time since falling; he was doing something so right that Sam wasn't even holding back the gasps, the small whimpers and the growls and the long-winded whines that rose and fell along with the seemingly involuntary jolts of his body in tune with the older's touch.

"We're wasting water," the younger choked with a hint of laughter in his voice, "I can't - you're - you're too good, or I'm - I'm too - I haven't - you know, I haven't, in a - this feels - _you're amazing_."

"You shouldn't be talking."

"I know, I suck."  
Now the laughter wasn't an undertone: it defined the whole sound of the younger's voice, even as it ended with a gasp and a soft, long moan.  
"You're so good."

Gadreel let one hand free to bring it over the back of the younger's neck - the other hand still kept bringing him closer to the edge, and the whole of Sam was shivering and squirming to get more, to reach the release he needed so badly. Being a part of that - being the _reason_ for it - made Gadreel feel oddly confident, like he'd still needed some confirmation that this was the right way to be with the other, but nothing about it seemed to conflict with what they both needed and wanted in their relationship, and the realisation made him... It made him happy.  
He held the younger tightly against him, teeth nipping at the sensitive skin at the man's neck and shoulder still as he felt relief wash over the longing tension in Sam. The hunter clutched onto him with both hands, fingernails clawing red marks all over his back and teeth now (finally) finding Gadreel's shoulder as well so that they were both marking one another in that suddenly very uncomfortable position against the shower's wall. Water flowed around and between them, and the angel could hear the other's heartbeat amongst the pulsing of his own.  
For a moment, Sam did nothing but breathed.

"Man, I can't feel my legs."

"You are fine, Sam."

"I know. _I know_ , right? This is the best I've been since - _forever_. I need to sleep. I can't feel my damn legs, Gadreel."


	15. Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra short, you got two yesterday. Shh.

* * *

 

The cold smell of wet stone lingered in the air as the bedroom faded, and alongside it the comfort and the safety of feeling Sam's body curled up so very close to Gadreel's were lifted and replaced by the familiar void of loneliness. Suddenly Gadreel couldn't see - everything was a blinding shade of white and grey, but he _knew_. The surface upon which he'd collapsed, the chains that kept him there, unmoving, burning and tearing at his bleeding wings... the blindfold on him, he knew it all. His breathing grew heavy and fast and he felt tears in his eyes as reality washed over him: he was there again. No, not _again_ ; maybe he'd never left to begin with. His fingers sought out anything in front of him but he could find nothing, not even Abner, and of course not - Abner was dead. Sam... maybe Sam had never existed and if he had, he wasn't here either. Castiel, an angel leader, a guide in the dark times, would never have lowered himself to Gadreel's level. Having imagined as much seemed like an insult to the seraph; that someone like Gadreel dared to think him a friend, a brother. It had all been some kind of a cruel hallucination, perhaps just another mind game inflicted upon him - as he'd learned from Sam, whether the man was real or not, the worst pain was in knowing that the freedom you'd thought you'd had had been nothing but an illusion, a trick you'd fallen for.

He struggled, trying to regain vision, trying to make sense of his surroundings, but the air was suffocating and his wings hurt too bad, and his carved chest hurt and stung and burned each time he moved. He whined, although he knew that was exactly what _they_ wanted to hear: the fear in him was too strong, the despair at what was so clear to him now. He could do nothing, however, and each time he moved the chains only grew stronger and they wound up tighter around his body, and now he could hear - somewhere far, but too close and approaching still, Thaddeus. Thaddeus was coming for him.

 

* * *

 

Sam woke up to the older shivering next to him. His awareness grew gradually from vague knowledge of the fact to hearing the gasps and the fear in them, and when he opened his eyes to see Gadreel as fast asleep as he'd been just a moment earlier, he realised there was very little he could do to help the situation. Still barely awake, he brought his hand over the angel's arm and caressed it gently.  
"Gadreel?"  
He shifted closer, bringing his chin over the other's head, fingers travelling the length of his arm and sliding over to the back of his neck.  
"It's okay."

Jess had slept uneasy. The stress had done that to her - for Sam himself, and he assumed for the recovering angel as well, stress didn't help the nightmares either. This had always worked for her, the gentle reminders from the real world that it still existed, that whatever was happening inside her mind wasn't as real as the touches and the whispers, but Gadreel seemed oblivious to them. The breaths that escaped him sounded like half-spoken words in a language that Sam couldn't recognise, language which sometimes sounded like Enochian but had words that didn't seem to fit. He realised, now completely awake and feeling uneasy with the older growing more and more scared in his sleep, that it was probably old Enochian, the language that had existed before the Enochian he knew - the language, he assumed, which was native to Gadreel and the angels that had come first before all the others.

"Gadreel, c'mon."  
Sam's fingers gripped the older's shoulder gently and he shook him ever so slightly, trying to bring him out of the nightmare and back to the bedroom without any unnecessary force that might shock him into defensive, but still he got no answer - like the dream had so tightly woven Gadreel inside it that letting go was almost impossible.  
And then, suddenly, the male's eyes flew open and he backed off, reaching the edge of the bed so quickly that Sam could do nothing but jump out of surprise. A flash of silver in the light of the corridor (who'd turned the lights back on?) alerted him to the blade in the older's hand and he prepared to dodge a blow that never came. Instead Gadreel stepped back from the bed, trembling, panting, gazing wildly around like he'd only acknowledged Sam's presence as a detail amongst the rest and was now looking for the danger he wanted to sink his weapon inside of, reaching the wall and the door before he found anything.

"It's okay," Sam uttered, half out of the bed and half still on it, "Gadreel, look at me. _Look at me._ You're _safe_. Whatever you think is after you, isn't."  
He was dizzy when he stepped on the floor, palms exposed and arms slightly spread to his sides, eyes upon the older's barely visible form against the light shining from behind him - he could still hear the angel's breathing and the terrified little sounds that sometimes escaped alongside it.  
"You had a nightmare. It's okay. It's _okay_ , Gadreel. I'm here - don't stab me. You're safe."

The angel turned to look at him and they both held their breaths for a moment's time.  
"... Sam?" the other finally breathed out, sounding disbelieving, "Sam."

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm here. This is real. I'm real. You fell asleep. It was a dream, Gadreel, whatever it was, it wasn't real. Put the blade down. It's okay."

A flash of silver travelled past the faint light, and Sam felt like a weight shifted from his chest. He came closer carefully, knowing the weapon was still right there, but when he placed his hand over Gadreel's hand and took a gentle hold of it and the angel blade trapped in its grip, there was no sign of struggle. The hunter pressed his body into the angel's carefully, inch by inch until he could feel him tremble and didn't dare to move further so as to not make Gadreel feel trapped or constrained. A film of cold sweat covered the angel seemingly entirely, but the new bandages over his chest were still intact and dry, so at least he hadn't hurt himself on this clumsy escape across the room. Sam was surprised to feel the male's hand softly land over the back of his head and his fingers bend into his hair to start slowly caressing him but then he realised this was how Gadreel comforted himself: he didn't need reassurance that _he_ was watched over, he wanted and needed reassurance that he was still in control and strong enough to protect Sam instead. He needed to know he wasn't chained, that he wasn't hurt, and that _Sam_ wasn't hurt either - it was all that mattered to him. Not personal safety but personal strength, the ability to fight. He wasn't human. He was a soldier, a sentry with only one purpose in life: to defend. It was that which he had been stripped of before and it was that which he feared losing again.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Sam asked him quietly, free arm bending around his body for comfort and warmth.

"No. Everything is fine."  
The angel's voice broke in the middle of the sentence but the younger let it slip and simply nodded instead.

"Come back to bed," Sam begged and pulled at the hand he'd trapped gently to initiate movement.  
Gadreel still seemed as if rooted to where he was, and his shivering hadn't stopped either, so the hunter ceased soon and leaned back in for an embrace.  
"The prison haunting you still?" he asked.

The sudden renewed stiffness of the older's body gave him a clear answer.

"Gadreel," he said clearly, stepping a single step back, "You're not in that cell. You'll never be in that cell again. Open the door."

"..."

"Please. Humour me. Open the door. Let some light in here."

Slowly, the shape of the sentry's stood aside from the door and, although it seemed like he didn't believe he could, he reached for the handle, the lock, and soon the corridor's light was pouring in as golden as it had always been, illuminating not only Sam standing right in its way but also the messy bed in the background. The blade was gone now: it had slid back into Gadreel's grace before he'd made the move, and Sam couldn't see it anywhere. Instead he saw the other relaxing, and a smile seemed to be fighting its way to Gadreel's lips.

"See?" the hunter huffed warmly, "We're still here. Safe and sound."

"I'm... sorry, Sam."  
The sentry tore his eyes from Sam and took a step outside the door, glanced both ways and then returned inside, closing the door behind him.  
"I believe you. I am sorry for waking you."

"It's okay. Really, it's fine. I know how it goes. Crawl back in with me? It's warmer there and I'm still half-asleep."

"Of course."

 

* * *

 

The next morning started out awful, even with Gadreel's presence there with Sam when he stirred. He made the mistake of letting the other be instead of dragging on the past night with sleepy kisses and cuddling, and the next mistake he made was taking his coffee to Dean's bedroom. The man-turned-demon wasn't there. By moving the bed repeatedly and extremely quietly around he'd broken the sigil, and now he was nowhere to be found.

"Goddamnit."

He forgot the coffee, woke Gadreel up with an alarmed summary of the situation, made sure he was armed with a blade and set off with one in his own hand, knowing they both stood little chance at capturing - or even surviving - Dean Winchester the Knight of Hell with their stupid, useless little pokers if he somehow had avoided all the traps set out to prevent exactly and precisely this from happening, but it was the best he could do. To his disappointment, great terror and the final nail over the coffin of his good mood, he couldn't find the man.  
Gadreel, on the other hand, did.

"I found him in the garage."

"Thank God."

"He's not pleased."

"Never thought he'd be. I mean, I boobytrapped his car. What the hell."

Gadreel's mouth twitched.  
"At least he was still here."

"I can't believe he fell for that. I mean, I checked it earlier and he wasn't there but the car was, so I looked elsewhere - God, he must have been right there _with_ me somewhere."

The angel nodded, then hesitated. Sam aimed a stern look at him, expecting.  
"What?" he finally asked when the older wasn't speaking.

"Amongst the insults, he called me your whore. I thought that might be something you - want to prepare for."

"Oh, God. God. He probably - he probably heard us yesterday."

"I did not ask."  
Despite the grave tone of his voice, Gadreel offered a small empathetic smile to Sam, who sighed in defeat.

"Get some coffee," the hunter said then, "I'll go make sure he won't leave. I'll give him the first shot today. He's not leaving this bunker black-eyed if I can help it and as far as I know... I can. This ends now."


	16. A Strange Conversation

* * *

 

When Sam came back, he looked exhausted but oddly happy - at least happier than he'd been when Gadreel last saw him that morning. The angel offered a fresh cup of coffee to the younger, and Sam accepted it with a quiet, quick thank-you before settling by the other's side against the level behind them.  
"That took longer than I thought. He really, _really_ didn't want the blood."

"I don't doubt that for a moment."  
Gadreel's vision dropped towards the bruise on the younger's arm and the drop of blood that had dried and been wiped off from the skin later.  
"Did he fight?"

"Oh, yeah. He did."

"And the Blade?"

"Well, that's the problem, isn't it? It's sharper than it looks."

Gadreel nodded.  
"Are you alright?" he asked, and Sam nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I, uh, I was quick. I'm gonna need help next time, though, really. I just - I wanted to do it alone."

"I will help you," Gadreel reminded, his expression and voice torn between determination and concern.

"He's pissed off, man."  
Sam sighed.  
"Ready to rip not only you apart but me too. The things he said, Christ, I - I mean I've heard him say a lot by now. But that? That's anger."  
He seemed to shiver but then a sigh broke the tension in him and he leaned back again, shoulder brushing against Gadreel's arm. He looked at the angel and seemed to measure him with a hesitant look on his face - then, a smile was brought back onto his lips and he shook his head in his thoughts.  
"At least it'll be faster with the two of us there. And, hell, maybe he settles. Maybe the blood works on him as quick as it did on Crowley. I don't know, I've never tried to cure a Knight. It's not exactly the common cold or anything."

Gadreel nodded.  
"He will put up a fight. Do you think he'll be strong enough for this?"

Sam shrugged.  
"I thought - I'd try to stretch it. If it fails... well, I have blood in me. I can keep myself pure for this, whatever it takes. I planned to give him the next one tomorrow, and then keep going faster until he's healed when he - when he won't die because of it. Meanwhile... we need to get the Blade from him. First the Blade and then the Mark."

"We'll have the Blade tomorrow, whatever it takes."

Sam nodded in turn.  
"Yeah. Yeah."  
Now he shivered more visibly, bringing his hand to his side to cup an invisible injury.

"Sam," Gadreel called wornly, "Let me see it."

The younger shook his head and sighed.  
"It's nothing. Really. Stings like a bitch but it barely scratched the skin. It bled a little but it's stopped already. Seriously Gadreel, I'm fine."

A defeated smile anxiously crossed the older's features, as unwilling as he was to back off.  
"If you say so."  
To his surprise, Sam's free hand slipped into his and held it confidently.

"You know what we need to do?" the younger said with a grimace, "We need to get something done. Throw me a bone. One useful thing you want to do today?"

Gadreel turned to face the wall, brows creasing.  
"I don't know."

"Humour me. Anything."

The older looked away - this time with purpose, to the opposite side from Sam - and thought; the frown on him grew and grew until it was almost pained, like he'd never had to think of what he wanted to do in the world before. Then the expression vanished, leaving him with a blank instead, and he returned to stare at the wall.  
"In all my existence," he said in a surprised voice, "I've never had the freedom to choose. Now I cannot seem to stand up to the task. I can think of things we should do, but I do not know if they are things I want to do. I've never... _wanted_ much."

Sam rolled his eyes.  
"Hey. What does your coffee taste like?" he asked then, completely unprovoked.

Gadreel looked at him, raising a brow.  
"Like... coffee, I think."

"Okay."  
The corners of Sam's mouth twitched, like he was thinking back to some private joke of his.  
"Right. At least name a thing you think we should do first."

"We should prepare the dungeon for Dean. It is the one place that stands a chance at containing him, but we have to make sure he cannot escape from there. The garage might not be the best place to keep him in."

Sam nodded.  
"Yeah," he agreed, "you're right. I was thinking that as well. Let's do it. Then's my turn to choose."

 

* * *

 

They decided to relocate Dean now rather than later: there was no telling how well the trap would hold him now that the first one had broken so easily, given that this one was also located around an object that could possibly be used to break it. By the time they had managed to grasp and tear away the Blade from the Knight, Dean had figured an easier nickname for Gadreel - "Bitch", perhaps as a subtle jab at Sam or in fond reference to Gadreel's past and his status as what Dean alternatively liked to refer as Sam's fucktoy, replacement or whore, and the word was always carried in the most toxic tone of voice that the demon could muster. Sam got the other end of it, but his share of nicknames was much lesser - they only shared the title of traitor between the two of them, and Sam felt that maybe they did deserve it in equal amount.  
Getting the chains on the Knight was much harder; getting chains on Dean Winchester was hard enough, but this was Dean Winchester with the worst mojo in the attainable array and he was using it at least to half the potential. Not full, Sam had quickly realised - there was no way they could have achieved much at all if he'd put up a fight to the point that he could. He wasn't nearly Abaddon and even though some of it was simply because Dean was a novice and not a proper experienced Knight, most of it was because he was, Sam hoped, still fighting it.

Yet even with the chains on he was still trouble enough to make the way back to the dungeon a fight, but Gadreel had a firm hand at it and Sam allowed him to take the lead, trusting his strength more than his own against Dean as he was.  
The blood had thus far had no effect on Dean, not that Sam had expected much, but locking him up and chaining him in the chair that Crowley had spent a lot of time getting familiar with during the past year was a relief. This was where he would be healed, however long it would take. Absently the younger brother brushed his thumb across the bruise on his arm, content knowing it would only take a night before he could renew the prayers and the cleansing and continue the work. He was using cleansed blood mainly out of sheer hope it would work like a course of antibiotics, but in truth he wasn't sure if it made a difference whether it was purified or simply human: Crowley, after his aborted ritual, hadn't cared much about the difference, and as far as Sam knew, the blood had still continued making him less a demon. It didn't matter. For his brother, he would only do the best he could.

They left behind the dungeon bruised but oddly satisfied - scarce words were spoke, mainly to confirm that yes, a new pot of coffee would do them well, and that Sam's choice for their next task was to gather up all they could on Knights of Hell and figure out if there was something they could use. The translations of the demon tablet, the scriptures, the old files and all of the books that Castiel had gone through with Gadreel earlier would be matched for as full a picture as they could form, and it would probably take the rest of the day and at least two more to come. Gadreel agreed eagerly: spending time reading, and as Sam wished doing it in the more comfortable environment of the lounge instead of the study, sounded more like rest than it sounded like work. He parted to brew the coffee while Sam took his laptop with the scans of the demon tablet's translations and all of Kevin's notebooks with him to the lounge and fell into a comfortable, velvet-covered green couch with a quiet sigh. He'd get through this somehow. They all would - the sooner the better, especially for Castiel. They'd not heard a whisper of the seraph since he'd left but Sam assumed it was because nothing had changed: a part of him knew well that Castiel was avoiding contact mostly to avoid burdening them further, but as horrible as it was, Sam still couldn't bring himself to carry that weight and he would have been thankful for the older's sacrifice if the seed of worry didn't keep him too human to do so. He'd do his best once he'd finished with the handful he had here, but more than anything he hoped that Castiel would know to return if his situation worsened so that they could make him a priority instead, because the one thing Sam didn't want was another dead friend, another dead brother.  
He had enough of them in the biological sense and the very thought made him sick and cold.

The laptop opened with fifteen new e-mail messages in the inbox. The hunter disregarded them and opened the cloud storage instead.

 

* * *

 

Gadreel carried two cups of coffee, a thermos full of more of the same, and a cloth bag full of books with him when he left the study. His chest felt strangely light and his mouth tried hard to form a smile against all logic and reason; there was no one to smile at, yet he felt like he might explode if he didn't. Half-way to the lounge he had to stop, and as he bowed his head to let the expression out the fine hair at his neck and arms stood up and a shiver ran through his body: his whole being ached from the past weeks and today's wrestling match with a high-ranking demon, but he'd never been happier. His heart raced and his wings shivered in anticipation as he moved forwards, hands clutching the cups and arm pressing the metallic container against his side. The cloth bag hung low and heavy from his arm and he felt like he could have carried the whole library with him, but this was all that was relevant. This was more than they needed, everything that even mentioned the obscure higher ranking demons; case files, books, two boxes of stray papers, scavenged and half-burnt letters from unknown senders to dead receivers.  
He entered the lounge to find Sam with his feet tucked between the pillows of a large couch, fingers treading through the information onscreen like it was an extension of him, and the man didn't even look up to him when he dropped the bag down and offered a cup to him. The cup he did accept, and once Gadreel only carried the one for himself, he sat next to Sam on the couch and, in a leap of faith to practice what he'd promised, pulled the younger close against himself to once more feel the connection they'd lost during the morning. A crooked, submissive smile passed Sam's lips as he fell onto the angel beside him, somehow retaining almost the same pose he'd been in earlier even as he settled more comfortably against the older's body, and he sipped his coffee contently before leaving open a scan of Kevin's work to compare it with something in the notebooks.

"I'm so glad you're here," Sam sighed as Gadreel reached down for the bag again now that they were both settled, "I'd be drinking if you weren't."  
The angel poured books and files over their laps for himself to pick out one to start from, letters spilling from between the pages in their carton covers, but his attention was on Sam.  
"That said, if there's a cold spot it's Kevin's ghost coming for my throat, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like shit about that. I probably shouldn't have you anywhere near what he touched, but... he's dead, and Dean still has a chance. If I told him that, he'd get it."

"You do not need a permission to carry on your work."

"Yeah," the younger grunted dully, "and I'm not gonna call Linda to apologise about you, either. That's not the point. I still feel like I'm betraying him and - it's not even _about_ you. I just feel guilty. I'll never stop feeling guilty. I used to wonder if it'd make me feel better to stab you, and it wouldn't. I'd just feel more like crap. You don't deserve that. I don't deserve that. Nobody deserves the crap we get. Kevin didn't deserve what happened to him but punishing you for it now won't make a difference, at least not for the better. Do you have casefile #78 there?"

Gadreel swallowed before nodding. The cup burned at his hand as he raised it to his lips, the other hand searching through the various files scattered and battered by the flood of books surrounding and drowning them.  
"Here."

"Thanks."  
Sam's fingers brushed against his gently as he took the file and spread it on the laptop's keyboard.  
"I shouldn't be thinking at all," the younger continued, eyes running along the hand-written reports, "It won't change a thing. The only thing it does is that it makes me feel more guilty, more like crap, and more like I don't deserve to be okay. The truth is that I have the right to make a choice. I have the right to choose you, and I have the right to forgive you. I don't need anyone's permission. I can't forgive you for Kevin but I won't be forgiving myself for it either - from where I stand, you're no more guilty than I am. I was there. _I_ killed him. And the real problem, the actual culprit, is rotting wherever. Metatron's dead. Be honest with me; if Metatron hadn't played you, would you _ever_  have raised a hand against Kevin?"

"Never. I would have _never_ harmed him. It does not matter, for I did it and you are not to blame for my a-"

"No, it kind of does matter. Because the fact that you were manipulated and blackmailed into murder is sort of taking a lot of the weight off you, and you know what? I'm tired of killing people for being used. I'm tired of watching the wrong people die because they were hurt and abused by the people who had all the power over them. I'm tired of Metatron. I'm tired of Metatron's legacy. I'm tired of feeling like I can't have this, like I'm not allowed to feel safe and loved, because of what _Metatron_ planned, plotted, wrote and executed. If we start killing people for Metatron's bullcrap then we might as well just start with ourselves. We all did one thing or another to bring it to this point. Heaven's still locked. Everyone's still screwed. Metatron may be dead but his plan is sure as hell still working, and I'm not going to hurt you because he knew how to hurt you first."

Gadreel looked away: the warmth of the younger's body as it rested so relaxed against him made him feel conflicted, and the earlier happiness still lingered inside him as a painful sensation amongst the grief and guilt the words sparked to life. Then, with stiff fingers he picked up a notebook filled with Kevin's handwriting and flitted it open gently like it was an artefact, and in a manner it was - it was the writing of the last prophet, something profoundly sacred, something invaluable and precious, and it contained the very last translations of the Word of God inside. He ran his fingers across the text and his chest hurt, ached like a weight was crushing it, underneath the bandages that still secured the healing sigil in his flesh.  
"Out of all of my mistakes," he spoke in a strained voice, "this is the one I regret the most."

"More than Eden?" Sam asked almost absently, turning the page in front of him around and curling up in a tighter ball against the older's side.  
He sipped his coffee and Gadreel did the same.

"I should have remembered," the angel replied then, "that it was not Eden that I was meant to protect above all - it was humanity, all of you, who I was set to guard. In taking Kevin's life I betrayed my cause, everything I live for. My fear is not an excuse. There is none that I can make, and nothing I would say to defend my choice."

"So if you were given a chance to change just one thing in your past -"

"I'd tell Dean the truth."

Sam raised his head and glanced over at Gadreel, brushing back his hair as his brows raised.  
"After falling?"

"When he first asked my name. I'd tell it to him. I'd ask you as myself; ask if you'd let me save you. I've learned to speak the truth, Sam, no matter the cost. I've lied enough and my lies have only hurt others and myself, and it is a price I was never prepared to pay. It was not mine to trade, either. I regret each and every turn that led to Kevin's death - I regret ever letting myself down to that level. That is not who I am. That is not who I was. In making that choice, I destroyed what I was, who I am, but it is not myself I feel the pain for, make no mistake. I should have chosen exile and death instead. At least I would have died the angel I knew I was. Now I no longer know what I am or what I stand for; I know my duty but not if I am fit to serve."

"You think a lot when you're not talking."

"I avoid talking. It's never done me any favours."

"Yeah."  
Sam fell quiet, flipping over another page and then returning to the other, and Gadreel allowed himself to turn more attention towards the text he was supposed to be searching through. The notebook he'd picked had nothing in common with the book he was reading, but the information was all new to him: Kevin's research had never before crossed his view, it wasn't something Sam and Castiel had felt comfortable sharing with him. The tablets themselves, of course, he didn't have the skill to read.  
"You know you can and you should talk to me. Whatever it is, I wanna hear it, okay?"

For a moment, Gadreel didn't know if he'd dare. Then he nodded - just nodded - and returned to the book again. Sam spread the physical pages in front of him to two rows, zoomed out on a couple pages of Kevin's texts on the laptop, and slipped his freed hand into Gadreel's to hold for comfort. He had a smile on him when Gadreel looked.  
"I want to make this work. I mean, at this point, I've crossed a line. I made the choice, you know? I made the choice to let you in, and even if everyone will think me a traitor for it, I can't just undo that choice. I don't want to, either. If I close out everyone and pretend there's no moral standard I have to force us to fit, you're all I want, and if the only pressure I have with us comes from outside factors - it's worth fighting through. So - I know you don't feel like I do. I know what we have is - it doesn't come to you like it comes to me and it's probably a lot more complicated than will and want for you."

There was a question there, but Gadreel didn't know how to answer it. His notebook had so far not once mentioned the Knights - it detailed portals and navigating the actual realm of Hell, something he hoped he'd never need to know. He turned the page, Sam's hand still in his grasp. The younger was thinking; he had a glassy stare with which he stared above the computer's screen, clearly concentrated on something that wasn't the research. Then, quite suddenly, he returned to it with Gadreel's hand as wrapped with his as before and changed the windows open on the laptop.  
"I just want to know," he continued, "if what I want isn't what you feel okay with. I don't really know how to talk about this with an angel. I don't know if what I want is impossible in the first place. I mean, I take you for a human, and that's just not what you are."

"What is it that you want?"  
The specifics mattered - Gadreel had no idea what they were, unless they were laid out for him in terms he had previous knowledge of. Of course he knew, approximately, that they were discussing the nature of their relationship, but that as the extent of his understanding didn't provide Sam with the confidence and reassurance he needed.

"I don't know."  
The younger fell quiet for a while, this time to match text with text. His hand parted from Gadreel's to write down a few notes on a torn piece of paper, then dropped the pen on his lap, crossed the space back and rejoined their fingers once more.  
"A relationship. A category to put us in, something I can check, a label. I need to know what's going on, and - I think what we have now - I think that's where we're at, but I can't be in a relationship alone."

The fine print was monogamy; human practices related to romance and sexuality and their exact placement as individuals in terms to one another within the societal roles and expectations. Gadreel huffed, stirred to reclaim the comfort his current pose had lost, and then settled to think. His fingertips mapped the shape and feel of the book's pages piled together, the angle at which they bent closer towards the middle and fell further as the weight of the rest pressed them against the covers.

"The concept is strange to me," he said then, "I never thought - I've never learned to look at your social practices as something I'd personally be involved with. I know what you speak of, and I am not opposed to it, but I do not know what expectations it places upon me, or what it entails specifically. I understand the idea, not the practice itself."

"I just need a name. I don't expect you to - the rest is, really, just that we're - we're something together. It's just a label for what we have, the way we're together. If I know I'm in a relationship I have a context for everything that makes sense, because right now, we're kind of all over the place. We're former enemies, current allies, potential friends, yet somehow I slept with you last night and I want to do it again, and when I said I loved you, I meant it. I have no idea what's appropriate and what's not anymore. So I just - I just need to know which role we're choosing. The first three kind of go together but I can't have this if we're not... I can't let myself love you if it's not something that you want."

"I want it."  
The words fell without delay, confidently.  
"I want what we have now."

Sam chuckled, reaching now to turn one of the pages he had on the keyboard.  
"So you do want things."

"I suppose that I do want many things, as strange as the concept is - I merely lack the words to express myself properly. What we have now is something I never considered, but it is something I wish to keep. Losing any part of it would..."  
Gadreel struggled for the right way to express it; he truly did not have the words.  
"I care about you, Sam Winchester. You mean more to me than I thought any individual human being would, and how I feel about you is entirely different to any other being I've ever come across. I do not expect the same from you, I do not expect to be special; what I am trying to say is simply that what we share seems appropriate for the way I feel about you, and if a relationship is the proper term for this, then we should use it."

"This is the strangest conversation I've ever had, Gadreel."  
Sam turned to look at him, a hint of a smile playing upon his features before he drowned it in a mouthful of coffee.  
"And that's the strangest way anyone ever told me they loved me, too."


	17. The Knight's Approval

* * *

 

Dean wanted to pace. He wanted to walk, at least just to stand up, but the chains weren't allowing him any movement. When Sam entered the room, he didn't spit out a word but the look he had on him spoke enough. Gadreel was bruised and Sam was bruised, but Dean was bruised too; his bare arms had fingerpints on them, and Sam knew it wasn't all.

"Hey, Dean."

The younger stayed much further than an arm's reach back: pain was visible from him, the conflict and the hurt at seeing Dean the way he was, and he knew the Knight could see it as well.

"Hey there, Sammy."  
The voice was mocking.  
"Here to heal me?"

"No. Just here to give you some company."  
Sam leaned to the wall and sighed. Air flowed into the hidden room through the door that was still ajar as if to add insult to injury for Dean, but in truth the escape route made Sam feel more at ease. They should have brought the other here to begin with but he knew he wouldn't have allowed that; he'd been too distraught, too caught up in emotion, sentimentalities, his own pain.  
"I know how it's like. To be locked up alone in a room, tied to an object, you know. We used to be the other way around. I know what it feels like. I know the claustrophobia and the fact that you think I've betrayed you. So... I'm here to take the spite."

"Oh, Sammy, aren't you the hero."  
The chains clinged.  
"I can't even pick my goddamn nose but you're not gonna make me beg for anything. If you think we're gonna have some heart-to-heart here well I hate to break it to you, man, but we ain't."

"No," Sam simply replied with a sigh, "I'm not stupid."

"So where's the boyfriend?"

The corner of the younger's mouth twitched.  
"Not here," he said in a warm tone.

"'Not here.' Friggin' genius. Close enough to make you smile."

"Yeah. Close enough."

"Sammy I know you have the hots for the wrong people but c'mon, this is like Stockholm syndrome. That douchebag practically raped you and you're chill with that?"

"I'm good, thanks for caring."

"I don't think you are."

Silence. Sam noticed he was smiling, even though the smile had a bitter tone to it as he watched the older and made note of the piercing, hateful stare thrown at him.  
"I'm just wondering," he said in a casual voice then, "how honest you are? Like back when I was soulless, I didn't really care about holding back, I just said what I thought. I've been wondering if being a demon is kind of like that, just with a nasty twist. Because, you know, I don't find it hard to think that you'd be thinking all of these things about Gadreel. I'd just be surprised to know you hate me as much as you say, but I guess it does make sense. I'm the biggest disappointment of your life, so why wouldn't you?"

"What was the thing we always used to tell each other about demons?" Dean mock-wondered, then pretended to remember; "Oh, yeah, right - demons lie. But that's not what I'm doing, I promise you. And hell if you don't get it right - you _are_ the biggest disappointment of my life. I was surprised when you first told me that you _get_ it. You knew it all along, and still you've always let me down, _always._ "

"Not this time, Dean. Not this time."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."  
Sam shifted.  
"Yeah. I've been thinking. Standing up for myself is something I should have done a long, long time ago. It's not my fault that you ended up this way in the sense that I thought it was. It's my fault in the sense that I kept playing your game until it was too late. I should have ended it while I still could. We haven't been brothers for years, Dean, and the tyranny wasn't a new thing. You hated to watch me grow up, and you feared that it'd mean that I'd leave you."

"You did leave me, though, so I guess I was right?"

"No, Dean. No. I didn't. You chose not to keep in contact. You _chose_ that."

"I didn't have a choice!"

The silence that followed next had a strange ring to it, almost embarrassed, like Sam had caught Dean from something he didn't want to be caught at. Then the younger shrugged.  
"You did have a choice," he said, "You just chose to obey Dad."  
Dean hissed - it sounded like water hitting a hot stone. He turned to look away, the only thing he could do.  
"I know it won't matter to you," Sam continued, "but I'm gonna make you human again, and I'm going to find a way to remove the Mark too, no matter what it takes. I just hope that when you're you again, you can respect me for what I am and stop holding me up to standards I can't reach up to, because no one can, Dean. It's not just me. It's that what you expect of me isn't humanely possible."

"D'you think this is Dr. Phil, dude?"

"No."  
Sam laid his hand over the door's frame but turned a sad smile towards Dean before leaving.  
"Real life's never that easy."

 

* * *

 

The week was turning to a close uneventfully: Sam tried to split his time between research and staying with his brother, although the healing had started out seemingly ineffective, and Gadreel made use of his as well as he could by never taking those breaks from their work. There were little results and nothing that would have helped them with the Mark, and as Castiel made no note of himself whatsoever during the days that passed, the mood in the bunker remained barely above desperate. The nights were somewhat easier: often enough Sam fell asleep on Gadreel on the lounge's couch mid-research with books on his lap and half a cup of coffee still in one hand, and Gadreel let him rest while he was still reading himself. His time with Sam had taught him the basics of using the laptop, and after gaining permission he sometimes spent time reading through the various, often unrelated, information stored digitally while Sam wasn't there to guide his attention, but for the main part, any and all information he did learn while studying the relevant was about as fruitless as reading about Egyptian mythology or the history of Chinese research of the spirit realm in its potential for helping Dean Winchester.

Their newly recognised relationship was pushed to the side in favour of this ceaseless struggle against futility, but it didn't bother Gadreel in the least; he was happy to preserve the contact they had and glad to see how much more balanced and calm Sam was in his company than when he was alone, and it was well and enough for him. Sometimes the younger, too tired and distraught for much more than that, still broke their routine by climbing on his lap and kissing him until their lips were numb and he'd made them both breathless by the repetition and friction and potential alone, but he lacked the enthusiasm, the drive, that had pushed him on before, and it never moved to anything from there. Instead he often dropped back on the couch, the bed, or his own chair from the older's lap and resumed reading, almost always with a deep, dissatisfied little sigh or a quiet grunt to make a point about how utterly unhappy he was with the situation. What exactly displeased him each time remained a mystery, but there wasn't much to celebrate and Gadreel simply had no good news to alleviate the younger's burden with, so he could do nothing much for Sam's benefit. The only thing he could offer was his presence and assistance, as useless as it seemed to be.

Then, at last, the blood seemed to start working.

 

* * *

 

"Ugh, you."  
That was Dean's way of greeting Gadreel, and the look he threw at the cup of coffee that the sentry laid in front of him was as if it was visibly tainted by poison.

"Good morning."

"The morning could be better. Actually, it could be three in the afternoon or, hell, three in the middle of the goddamn night for all I know, because I haven't seen sunlight since a forever ago. But, hey, whatever, good morning to you too. You here to get back to me for stabbing you, since, uh, you came alone?"

Gadreel noticed a calm, almost amused smile on his own lips as he watched the demon; the soul was now almost recognisable, not as utterly twisted as it had been before.  
"Would I bring coffee to you if I was here for revenge?" he asked.

"The hell if I know."  
The man's chains had been loosened, and he could move his hands with more freedom than before after proving he could be trusted with that privilege. It allowed him some small pleasures in life such as coffee in the mornings, if not much more than that.  
"Then what are you here for?"

"Sam thought -"

" _Ugh_."

"- it would make him feel better if there was a ceasefire between me and you."

"Well, I'm glad he isn't holding any unrealistic expectations, because a ceasefire's the damn best case scenario he's getting out of me."  
The look in the demon's eyes spoke of something else, too, but Gadreel couldn't read it - there wasn't much chance to read anything from Dean if he didn't want to reveal it outright. The silence stretched as Gadreel had nothing to say, not in his defense or otherwise, and Dean seemed to be battling that emotion inside him, whatever it was. Then finally the demon shifted, uncomfortable and coming to some sort of a conclusion that didn't seem to please him much.  
"You're not leaving, are you."

"No."

"No, I mean, he's not gonna throw you out once he's done with you. He's not that kind of a guy. So I'm - I'm stuck with you. I'm actually freaking _stuck_ with you, because my fucking brother, for some reason I can't fucking understand, thinks there's something about you that excuses you betraying us, you murdering Kevin. And he thinks - he honestly thinks - that if he sends you here we're just gonna shake hands and forgive and forget?"

"I do not think he would expect that. He is not stupid - you know this."

"Well to me he looks real stupid right about now. Because I'm not gonna let that slide. I don't care if you can make him howl, I don't care about whatever the hell else you contribute in his life, because I see you for the filth that you are and I'm never forgiving you for what you did to us. I'm never forgetting. You'll have me on your ass 'til the fucking day I die, I swear that to - to God or whatever's out there watching."

"I am not here to ask for your forgiveness, nor have I asked for Sam's. That is not something that I deserve to have."

"The hell is it that he sees in you, anyway? You _used_ him. You manipulated me into letting you in, you used him. And now he's not only keeping you alive but he's..."  
Dean swallowed and looked away.  
"... and he wants me to stand aside and just let that happen?"

"I did not manipulate you."

"You fucking manipulated me, Gadreel."  
The piercing look was back on the angel, and if it could have killed, it would have.  
"Don't you dare tell me that you didn't."

"All I did was tell you the truth."

"Like about your name? And, uh, about the fact that you were working for Metatron?"

"I _wasn't_. I did _not_ work for Metatron when we met."

"Oh, yeah? And I should believe that because you switched sides when it fucking suited you?"

"No. But it is the truth. I did not lie to you about my intentions - I came to help you, in turn for your help."

"Aren't you the fucking Samaritan."

"No. I had selfish ends. I needed a safe place, and I needed allies. I feared you would recognise my name and deny those from me, perhaps worse, but my intentions were pure."

" _Nobody_ cares about your intentions, Gadreel!"

"In the end, they mattered little. As I said, I am not asking for your forgiveness, as I do not deserve such a thing. But I was not working for Metatron before you drove me out, and I made the wrong choice. I regret that, as useless as it is now. I did not know better, and I was afraid."

"So that's what you told Sam? That you were scared?"

"I told him everything I could. He already knew most of it - he was there."

For the first time, Dean hesitated.  
"How much - how much does he remember?" he asked then.

"Not much, but enough to know that I am not lying to him. At this point it is by choice, and I do not blame him for choosing to forget. I also do not expect you to believe me, but at least for the sake of your brother, I wish you could give me the benefit of doubt."

There was a long silence - it stretched on through Dean finally picking up the cup of coffee and drinking, and it persisted long after he'd laid it back down and turned his eyes elsewhere.  
"I gave you everything," he finally said, "I trusted you with the one thing I care about the most in the world."

"I _did_ heal him."

"No, you _patched_ him, and then you stayed because you're a narcissistic, arrogant dick who thinks he can just use people to ensure his own friggin' survival, Gadreel. You didn't _heal_ him. You kept him alive, there's a big damn difference, especially because you told me otherwise."

It appeared to come as a surprise to Dean when Gadreel lowered his gaze and then slowly nodded in agreement.

"You're not even trying to turn yourself into a saint for that, huh?"

"No. You are right."

"And then you turned and stabbed us both in the back. And you expect me to, what, pat you on the head for that? Good job, Gadreel? Is that what you want?"

"I'm sorry."  
Gadreel looked at the demon, jaw clenching, and swallowed thickly.  
"I cannot take back what I did."

"The hell are you doing here?"

"I... do not know."

"Yeah?"

The older stood up and shook his head.  
"No. I do not know. It is by Sam's choice; I deserve none of the kindness he's showed me, you are right, but I cannot and I will not turn it down."

"You are one sick, selfish piece of work, you know that? You do realise that he's only with you because he has no place else left? Because he's desperate? It's not because he loves you or - or whatever he's told you. I know that's what he thinks, but in the end, it's just about what he feels he deserves and what he feels he doesn't. I know my brother, Gadreel, and you're killing him. What we did to him, you don't take that back. You don't turn it around. It's poison - _you_ are poison - and he's taking you in until there's nothing left in him for you to kill anymore. He's taking you because he's afraid of being alone, not like I am but he can't deal with something like this on his own. He's taking you because _you_ need _him_ , because you're a leech and _you_ won't leave him, and because he's drowning without you. But you're fucking killing him, can't you see that? What you did to him, it doesn't get worse than that. He forgives you for it because he feels like he's not worth anything more. Because, after all, you already know what a mess he is - he can't scare you off, and he thinks if he just believes hard enough, letting you use him some more is just about the only replacement for something real that he deserves. Everyone else dies on him. Everyone else dies on him, Gadreel, and he thinks it's his fault, that _he's_ the poison, so it's only fair that he drinks up the one that'll kill him in the end."


	18. Letting Go

* * *

 

Gadreel stood still with his eyes closed as Sam wrapped his arms around him and held him close.  
"I wasn't expecting much," the younger said in a gentle voice, "but you look like crap. What happened?"  
He didn't want to lose that contact when the hug broke, but there wasn't a part in him that could have held on now. He had a strange taste in his mouth, coppery like blood, and his chest hurt.

"He is right, you know," he heard himself reply through the mess of sensations, "He has no reason to forgive me."

Sam growled, spun around on his heels and motioned Gadreel to follow.  
"He needs to stop thinking he's the alpha and omega of this team," the hunter replied dryly, leading them up the staircase, "and accept that I can make a damn decision, too."  
They entered Sam's bedroom and Sam locked the door behind them, as if there was a likely chance that someone would follow them in. Nobody would - Castiel was still missing in action and Dean was locked inside a double trap and behind a pair of sturdy dungeon doors.  
"But to be honest," Sam continued then, dropping the key on the bedside table before facing Gadreel and falling back on the bed, "I don't know what I can do if he won't - if he can't accept you. I can't send you out, it's too dangerous; I can't keep you in, because my brother is an ass with anger issues, and he'd walk out the door or stab you or worse. I swear it's like dealing with a child, except he's damn dangerous, too. You know what it's like to... you do, right? To fear your own brother. But I guess it's different for me. I just - I want this one thing, this _one thing_ , and of course it has to be something that crosses him. I'm sorry, I'm probably just making you feel worse."

"No, you..."  
Gadreel sat down beside the other; he joined their hands although it seemed to raise a rock-solid bit inside his throat.  
"You are not making it worse."

Sam nodded, although he seemed doubtful still. Then, after a moment had passed in a tense silence, he stretched his neck and sighed and dropped on his back on the bed, never letting go of the other's hand.  
"Can we just forget about him for the day?"  
His voice was almost pleading.  
"I can't think straight. I sent the bunch of notes to some scholarly type in Israel, so now we're just waiting if she has a clue; I didn't tell her much but I hope it was enough to gain her interest. I kind of promised I have more and I do, it's just not really relevant to the Mark of Cain anymore. But it's - I feel like he doesn't give a crap and he probably _can't_ give a crap. I'm talking about Dean. I'd just like to hear a thank you for everything I do for him every once in a while, you know? Having him alive is good, but... sometimes I just want to hear I'm not, that I'm not worthless."

Gadreel watched the younger as he vented, unable to contribute much; he had no idea whether Sam even wanted him to.  
"You are not worthless," he assured him instead, and Sam held his hand tighter.

"Yeah."  
A smile crossed the hunter's lips and he closed his eyes.  
"Yeah. Thanks."

"You work hard for him because you love him. I know he appreciates it, even if he cannot tell you that the way he is now. Even if he couldn't before, he still feels it."

"Sometimes it's just so goddamn hard to believe that, Gadreel. Most the time I feel like I'm the biggest disappointment, that I never - that I never contribute anything positive to his life, but he cares about me because I'm his brother and... I feel like I owe him for that. I owe him my life and I feel like I don't have the right to complain or make my own decisions because I'm constantly, always letting him down when I do."

The angel huffed softly.  
"You two," he spoke in a tone as soft as he huff had been, "remain a complete mystery to me."

"We're a mess."

"And yet you still find the strength to fight these wars for others. Yes, I do think it is time that you have a day off, Sam Winchester. You have earned it."

"Thanks."  
Sam chuckled, eyes still closed.  
"I kinda needed someone to tell me that. I'm glad you're here, Gadreel. It's weird that I get to say that now, but I am. And if it comes to that, I - I'll follow you out that door. I'm tired of this life. I'm tired of everything. I can't stay here forever, not unless Dean learns to give me the space I need, I - I'm a human being too. He doesn't make me feel like one. He keeps me from breathing."  
His voice turned choked, and a teardrop wet the lashes of his left eye before sliding down his cheek. When he opened his eyes, he wasn't looking at Gadreel, he was looking at the ceiling.  
"I love him, but I can't live like this. I can't live so that he dictates what I do, where I go, who I see, who I trust, who I get to love. But if I go - he can't live without me, either. That's just not... it's not fair. So I stay because I don't want to hurt him. He keeps controlling me because he knows I'm not happy and he fears that I'll go. And we... become this."  
He had almost a pleading look in his eyes when he turned to face the angel, climbing up to lean onto his elbows to create a more even ground for them.  
"I'm not a saint," he said then, "but I'm alive and I want to _live_ , and if I don't even deserve that, then what's the point? I want to have friends again, I want to go out and not worry about Dean. I want what we have and I don't want it to require someone else's blessing. I want to be a person on my own. Somehow that seems like a lot to ask. Somehow it seems... selfish."

"You ask for nothing that you don't deserve," Gadreel noted gently, then hesitated.  
"Is this truly what you want?"

"This? Us?"

"Yes."

Sam nodded.  
"Yeah. I think I made that pretty clear?"  
The angel looked away, blush rising to his cheeks. He could feel the other's frown and the examining stare that was aimed at him now.  
"Is that - did he say something? Gadreel, if he's trying to - God. He said something about it, didn't he. Tell me. Goddamnit, tell me what he said! This is exactly what I meant - he _knows_ I won't bend but if he can get you to doubt, then he can still get what he wants."

"He said nothing you hadn't already told me," the sentry spoke in a heavy voice, "although you spoke them in context I should not take them out of. But it is true, is it not, that staying with me does hurt you. You feel guilty for what we share, and you are still hurting for what I put you through."

"I'm going to kill him."

Gadreel jumped to the feel of the hunter's fingers yanking his head back by his short hair, and the tension in him didn't break into the aggressive kiss that tasted of salt much like their first kisses had. He didn't remember to answer it either, or he simply did not dare; the reason didn't matter and Sam seemed too preoccupied to care. When the short, violent kiss broke, the younger's mouth was red from the friction and his eyes had fire blazing behind them.  
"Don't you _ever_ ," he breathed, holding back a breath of that same fire that reigned his gaze, "listen to Dean when he talks about what I feel. If you want to know how I feel, you come to me and you ask _me_ , because I know what I feel, Gadreel. I know what I feel and I don't need to be patronized, I don't need looking after, I don't need a brother to stand between me and the world to protect me from what I want. I love you, and it's not hurting me, Gadreel. This is not hurting me. You are _not_ hurting me. God, I'm so angry."  
The next kiss wasn't any less violent than the first one, but Sam was smiling into it, laughing; his fingers stretched behind the angel's ears and his nails clawed marks over the older's neck and shoulders.  
"I want to sleep with you."

"Are these things... related?"

The words were spoken into the kiss, but it broke when Sam had to pull back to make way for the laughter and the nod.  
"Pretty sure they are. Just go with it, okay?"

Gadreel nodded.  
"I trust you," he said.

 

* * *

 

The anger settled quickly: it was so easy to feel at ease with the older, to forget there was a world behind the locked door. Sam cast an occasional look at his cellphone hooked up to the recharger next to the key on the table but it never once made a sound to announce a mail or anything else for that matter, and once the reading light was again the only lit lamp in the room he could almost physically sense the stress relieving inside him.  
There was still something magical about opening the black hoodie's zipper to reveal the now bare chest of the older's - there was no need to cover the scabbed and healing cuts anymore, and Gadreel no longer seemed ashamed of them, so Sam had chosen to drop the bandages completely. He sat on the angel's hips, a pose that he was growing increasingly familiar with, but instead of simply staying back Gadreel's hands were now upon him as he concentrated on opening the male's belt, the button and the zipper of his jeans. They mapped out his shape and then insecurely, questioningly took a hold of Sam's shirt; their eyes met and Sam nodded, half a smirk on him - if he felt he lacked power in his life in general, here it certainly wasn't an issue. His consent was repeatedly asked for the smallest of things and it felt too good to mind. If Gadreel doubted whether he was allowed to take off Sam's shirt when his own was all but cast aside already, then he'd no doubt learned his lesson well, and maybe in time he'd have the confidence to explore the issue without this constant fear of breaking something caught into his each and every movement.  
He had a beautiful body, although Sam was afraid of acknowledging it, especially after being reminded it wasn't Gadreel's own exactly - he'd done a lot of reflecting on the fact but had chosen to trust and try to forget. After all, what Gadreel had told him of the vessel's consent made complete sense, and the older hardly had much reason to lie. The whole week he'd not as much as initiated a kiss, so it was clear that Sam was still the one whose desires involved the more physical aspects whereas Gadreel's priority clearly had more to do with more generic closeness and affection. Sometimes he didn't even come close but followed Sam like a dog instead, doing his damn best to be the perfect companion - if Sam had asked him to sit, shake and roll, he probably would have done it without question.  
It was strange and made it impossible for Sam to forget that the relationship was unusual, but he'd had unusual relationships before. Angel or not, at least Gadreel had a firm grip of the basics - he cared, he listened, and he voiced his own needs and at least tried to learn to communicate his doubts and limits as well. Now that Sam had pushed through the barrier of expectation and doubt and landed him here again, he seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit, even though he was still shy and lost about what was expected of him.

Nothing, Sam realised. Not this time.  
"I want to try something," he announced, fingertips playing at the opening of the parted jeans, "Tell me if you want me to stop, or if - if anything. Just say how you feel, whatever it is, okay?"  
Gadreel hadn't taken anything on their first time: he'd just given, and then given again. That wasn't what Sam was used to; it wasn't what Sam _wanted_. He left the male's hands free although he would have preferred to raise them above his head and grip them and press them into the mattress again for purely the sense of satisfaction it gave _him_. Yet he needed Gadreel to be secure where he was, it was the most important thing for the rest to work. No chains on him, no pressure to stay, just the freedom to choose whether he liked it or not. If he wouldn't, well, Sam would deal with that, even though it would present an issue he'd never been faced with before. Gadreel's sexuality in general seemed to be something of an issue Sam had never been faced with before: all his partners had previous experience, but this angel had none, if Sam ignored - and he did, gods, he _did_ ignore - the fact that he hadn't exactly lived chaste for the six months that Gadreel had possessed him without his knowledge. He had no idea and he certainly wasn't going to ask just what the other had felt - his initial 'everything' was depressing and unsettling enough to make the younger feel uncomfortable in his own skin, and that wasn't something he wanted to think back to now. So he'd treat Gadreel like this was the first time he was touched, and hoped it was close to the mark; that even though they'd shared the skin, maybe they hadn't so much shared the touch. In the end, it didn't matter. This was for the angel - this was done to him, it wasn't something that came to him because he couldn't object or turn away.  
The younger leaned over Gadreel and started from his neck: he'd already learned it was as sensitive and perhaps more so than expected, and that kisses in that area were almost guaranteed to arouse the other. From jawline to the pit between his collarbones and down, he tried to be as throughout and take it as slow as he could, feeling each change in the other's pose and measuring the tension in his body, trying to decide whether it was the good kind or the bad. He had the angel's hands upon his back, just stroking up and down although there was no rhythm to the touch and sometimes Gadreel seemed to forget his hands existed in the first place. The longer Sam paid him attention, the more positive his response seemed to get; his breathing was heavy but flowed free without hitching, his back arched timidly but noticeably into Sam's body to beg for more affection, more contact. His eyes were closed to show sincere trust and in an explicitly positive sign of him enjoying what Sam was giving him, and his neck was bared, inviting the hunter's touch to return to it every now and then. Sam made sure to stretch all of this until he felt secure that Gadreel was relaxed and open to him before he even tried to bring his hand down over his inner thighs or his lips down from his chest - as he'd expected, the shift brought back some of the hesitation and adjusting that the angel had all but abandoned for the exploration of the previous areas. It didn't strike Sam as particularly alarming and it wasn't extreme, but it took a lot longer now for the other to calm into the relaxed state again.

"Just tell me if you feel uncomfortable," Sam reminded him, feeling like he was probably overdoing the safety instructions but at the same time knowing well that repetition was crucial between them - it was likely that even with all of it Gadreel still wouldn't know how to tell him to stop if he'd cross a line, and Sam didn't expect him to.  
Instead he slowed down again, making sure he learned each and every inch of the male's abdomen before pulling down the waist of the jeans to kiss his hips instead. The warmth that welcomed his hand as he pressed it against the other's groin spoke more of the other holding his legs together than of anything else, but at least he was hard, and Sam could definitely feel it underneath the texture of the jeans which separated his hand from the angel's skin. The touch was met with a twitch and then slow relaxation - Sam wasn't moving, even his mouth had returned inches up from where he'd marked the lowest point at, before he could feel the other's thighs parting to invite him further. Even then the way he pressed his palm against the male was hardly more than a flirtation, a promise that he could give more if this was alright with him - Gadreel responded to it with a soft push of his hips and a held-back sigh to mark how it had felt for him.  
Sam looked up and saw him with his eyes still closed, cheeks flustered and lips parted, but overall he still seemed calm and relaxed and there was no sign of discomfort on his features nor in the way his body was reacting, even though he was still certainly out of his comfort zone in the situation.

It was absurd how difficult mirroring action was. Sam realised this as he finally gathered the confidence to undress the last layers from them both and suddenly was faced with the rest of his plan that he'd not really thought as throughoutly as he'd thought out the first half. He knew how to kiss a person, he knew how to turn someone on; he knew how to relax his partner and he knew how to make them comfortable. What he didn't so much know was how to touch another male; he'd struggled with it before but now it was crucial that he at least had the faintest clue of how to do it. He'd never had more than his own experiences where males were concerned: all his partners had been female, so he only knew what he liked and how he liked it, but not how it was given or if his likes and dislikes could even be generally applied to other men.  
He tracked the fine trail of hair on the older's stomach down with his lips, moved onto kissing the other's now exposed thighs and noted the clean, warm scent of his skin where the jeans had covered his body, and perhaps at that stage more than any other Sam realised how insanely attracted he was to the other. It wasn't just the emotional side, although the emotional side was what had allowed the rest to follow, but the whole of the male instead; the way he looked, the way he felt, the way he smelled were more to the younger's liking than he recalled most his partners being. Maybe it was just the fact that he was different and new - maybe it wasn't so much that he was exactly what Sam was looking for, but more that he was nothing like what Sam had found before. It didn't matter, as the hunter could have spent an eternity and then some just making sure he could paint this image with his memory and recall the exact texture of the other's skin even if they'd separate for good and he'd never feel it again. He ceased breathing for just the shortest while, mouth just an inch or two under the older's navel again, and realised he could surround himself with the scent in that way; it filled his nostrils and when he breathed again, the fresh air drove the fine details away from his senses but from not his memory.

When he looked, the angel was watching the ceiling: his eyes moved sluggishly about the scene in front of him and Sam wondered if he really saw any of it. Before he could grow uncertain of whether he was boring the angel, he felt Gadreel's hand reach into his hair and the male looked down at him with a faint smile on his lips.  
They seemed to have no words to share but the gaze was enough, and with his hair standing on end Sam returned to what he'd been doing, breathless and with his heart racing in his chest. Although they much fewer in numbers down where the clothes covered Gadreel's body for the majority of time, some freckles were still scattered along the path that Sam was kissing as his fingers finally bent to take a hold of the older's sex, and he concentrated on those instead of on what he was doing to drive away the insecurity that he'd conjured up to challenge the relaxation that he'd started out with. He needed the distraction when Gadreel's body tensed to the touch again, needed it because it was crucial that he'd remember to concentrate on those reactions now and not some imaginary score on how well he could give a handjob; that didn't matter. It didn't matter to Gadreel and it sure as hell shouldn't have mattered to Sam, but it did - he wasn't used to suddenly being a virgin again with no clue of how to even move his own damn hand. Turned out it was much easier than he'd expected once the angle was solved, and in order to drive out the rest of his hesitations and the doubt that the older's unmoving body was messaging him he crawled up again to kiss Gadreel on his mouth instead. He breathed out a relieved sigh when he got an answer immediately rather than delayedly, and he smiled into the kiss when he realised the answer was eager and that it released the tension he could feel underneath him almost entirely in seconds. The other's hips moved to greet his touch, rocking to it tryingly and then more confidently, and if Sam had expected no sound to inform him how he was doing, he'd been wrong. Gadreel's voice was low and warm and as timid as his movements were at first; he only let out any sounds when their mouths were joined and fell quiet the very moment Sam moved back, and then did not resume before the younger had returned to kissing his stomach and hips and sides and thighs, wherever the invisible path he followed took him.

Through the whole thing Sam had told himself he was crazy, but now that he'd gotten nothing but positive reinforcement for everything he'd done so far, he couldn't help but grow more ambitious - going through with the part that he hadn't truly given much _serious_ consideration wasn't such an insane idea anymore. He knew how to use his mouth; that was... a sum of experiences from female oral sex to the crazy bet he'd made with Jess on which of them could take the glittery, pink dildo deeper in their mouths - Jess had won, perhaps unsurprisingly, but he had a bigger mouth and hadn't struggled quite as much as she had expected - and right about now he realised that he didn't only dare himself to do it but that he really, _really_ wanted to try, too.

"How's it feel?" he asked, suddenly cold at his fingertips but excited to continue nonetheless.  
The angel let out an indiscernible sound and bucked his hips - the reaction seemed to shame him and he landed back on the bed, lips pressing together and eyes closed for a brief moment before he nodded and let out another, albeit more clearly agreeing, sound.

"Good," he finally managed to back it up with.

"Not too weird or anything?"

"No. I..."  
The older's hand found Sam's wrist and pushed it down ceasing all motion, and for a bit he just breathed before shaking his head.  
"It feels... overwhelming. Good, but overwhelming."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"I am not sure."

Perhaps it was too early, but on the other hand, if there was a word to describe sexual pleasure, 'overwhelming' would be one of the most accurate choices Sam could think of.  
"It gets worse before it gets better, but I think you'll learn to like it."  
For now, he let go - instead of continuing, instead of proceeding with the plan, Sam landed on the older's side on the bed and brought his arm around him to give him some time, just in case he didn't want to continue.  
Gadreel didn't seem to be sure either, as he stayed there to just breathe for a good long while. He crossed his knees to help with the pressure Sam had inevitably left behind, and after another moment had passed in silence, his hand found Sam's and brought it over his lower abdomen, pressing it against the skin and the curly hair, somewhat more confident than either seemed to have expected.

"I think I will learn to like it."

Sam nodded - he couldn't help the smile either.  
"Let me know if you need me to stop."

 

* * *

 

Gadreel didn't want the younger to stop. Even if he had wanted that, the feeling that followed the decision was much worse than the pleasure that the touches brought him - it left him burning, aching, feeling like he couldn't think or even breathe right, like the whole of him was concentrated upon needing and wanting more. At times he had to bring his hand over Sam's to stop him, the only kind of control he knew how to exercise, but each time the pause he could afford grew shorter; the body knew what it wanted, but he didn't know how to let it have it.

"Relax."

"It's harder than you'd think."

Sam laughed.  
"Yeah. Yeah, okay, you're right. Look, the thing is that - you're supposed to let go."

"I know."  
The angel swallowed, eyes closed and a drop of sweat gathering by his brow before finally falling down.  
"I am not an expert on that."

"It's okay. Really. It makes you feel really vulnerable and I think that's where you're holding back."

"I trust you. I wish my grace knew that."

"You know what?"  
The hunter's hand brushed through his wet hair and crossed his cheek gently, almost apologetically.  
"You stress about it too much."

Gadreel turned a blank look at the other, unable to deny it. Yes, he did stress about it.  
"I'm sorry," he uttered.

"Don't. Really, it's okay. Can I try something really crazy that probably gets you right through that problem? I don't want to - I don't want to force it if you don't want to, but I think it might be too much for you to fight back."

"Please."

"Seriously?"

Gadreel nodded.  
"I am not afraid of this. I simply do not know how to - I have no idea what to do."

"Close your eyes, breathe, relax. If you want an order, then that's it."  
For a moment, Sam did nothing but stroked the older's hair - his fingers traced the shape of the other's face and then his collarbones, falling further to draw a line through the middle of his chest and finally landing flat to cross the rest of the distance down.  
"What did you think you needed to apologise for?"

"I... feel I'm letting you down."

"No, you're not."  
The man's grip was firm and confident now; it had become that way in the past minutes, and he seemed to be completely natural in the way he laid his touches, the pressure, all of it. The experience wiped the angel's mind empty and then filled it with static, but that was where he put up a fight - he feared the loss of control, the emptiness, the lack of clarity and readiness. It scared him.  
"Let go, Gadreel. You're safe."  
The sentry nodded, but it was harder to do than it was to acknowledge. How could he possibly give into the nothingness when he'd fought to remain lucid for centuries, always prepared to defend himself or the one he'd chosen to protect? He drew in a long, slow breath that ached in his lungs, and let it out as slowly as he'd breathed it in. It hurt, but it relaxed the body, forced it calm. It wasn't his mind that was the problem, it was how his mind affected the vessel, how it locked it down and made it fight the sensation, the natural course it wanted to take. He knew it but he'd never had it for himself, and the truth of it was that going that far made him uneasy, perhaps afraid as well.  
"You're damn pretty, you know that?"

The comment threw him off the line of thought he'd gotten stuck in and for a moment he felt dizzy because of it. That space filled soon enough with the sudden acknowledgement of the utter, sheer pleasure he felt charging to his consciousness from the nerves in the vessel, and another low sound escaped his throat - it had been a while since the last one.

"And you sound really good, too. Don't hold back. You have no idea how much I want to hear that."

The angel shivered: his hips rose again to drive deeper into the touch, to beg for more, and although he had to turn his head away, he did let another sound cross through. It sounded... needy, earthly, aroused, and he had a hard time associating such a sound with himself, but there it was. His back arched and he let his lips part - without the barrier, his voice sounded louder than before, and he didn't know if it confused him more than it embarrassed or aroused him.

"Yeah - that's good. That's all I want; let me know how you feel."

The touch alone was enough to turn Gadreel into this mess, but just when he was certain the sensation couldn't get stronger, Sam added his lips to it - the slow, dragging kisses down his body, closer to the point of established contact between them, and in a moment's time the man was sitting on his thighs again as he'd been before, crouched, lips placing tiny embers like explosives over the flesh stretching over the bone of Gadreel's hips. The angel didn't know if he let out a sound - his ears were ringing too loudly, and his mind was clouded and useless.

"You... sound amazing. Don't stop, please."

He had no idea how Sam still had the coherency for speech, or how his own useless, blunt mind could still progress the words the other was speaking to him. His back ached from the strain now that he seemingly refused to let it rest anymore, but he still wasn't quite _there_ , not quite ready to cross the line, and the knowledge frustrated and scared him. The only thing he could do was to tremble and whine and fight the release like it was a question of life and death; no matter how much he told himself to stop, to just relax, he couldn't. The thought of failing again scared him as well but no more than the thought of success, and there he was at the dead end, unable to decide, and therefore unable to reach any kind of a conclusion mentally or otherwise.  
His wings were spread over the bed but he felt them twitching, confused whether to stir and curve to protect him or to stay put as they were - it wasn't just the physical part of him that felt this. It was the whole of him, to the very core, and the friction caused by the mortal soul pushing forth to connect with his torn grace only served to add a whole new layer of new, raw feeling to the already overly complex, stressful whole of a situation.

But did he enjoy it?  
He would have lied if he'd denied.

A muffled, held-back sound of surprise escaped him when Sam didn't make the usual circle around his sex but rather pressed his lips over the extremely sensitive skin at the very base, then dragged his tongue up along the shaft and lifted before ever touching the tip that most desperately ached for the touch. His whole body shook to that feeling, and the sound that he'd let out never quite died before it was another, and then another again, dying only to be reborn right away to form some kind of a strange sexual purring sound that continued on until the next kiss murdered it to a halt in Gadreel's breathing. If the sensation before had been overwhelming then this was downright unbearable, but there wasn't a single part in the angel that wanted it to stop. The fear in him ceased just like his breathing had done, and his mind was suddenly quiet like a void had been created in its midst: he gasped for air when the younger's mouth took him in, wet and warm and soft with a textured tongue dragging over the underside of his sore, hard flesh. His fingers charged for the hunter's hair and gripped, stroked them with clumsy, rough movements, and Sam paused perhaps to make sure it wasn't to pull him back, but that was the last thing that Gadreel could have wished for - when he continued, the feeling was so strong that the room seemed to fade from the angel's consciousness entirely, something he had never experienced before. He'd never allowed such unawareness for himself, he'd never dropped his guard to let the world to exist there somewhere without caring about it, and he'd never even considered it possible before now that he realised he simply didn't have the capacity to include himself in it anymore. Everything that mattered was the man there beside him, the brilliance of his soul joining somehow against all odds with his grace, and the flesh that allowed that bridge to be built between them.  
It could have lasted forever or just a minute, the angel had no idea. The sole thing he knew was how it felt like when Sam backed from him again, how the feel of his hand returning upon his body was different to how it had been before now that saliva still covered the skin and his whole existence seemed to consist of electricity just waiting for that one touch, that one stroke, before it was released - the wave washed over him and he drowned in it for that one eternity, suddenly calm like all of the chaos that had defined him just a second ago had been replaced by perfect stillness instead. The air he breathed in now felt fresh and it brought life back into him, spread a tingling sensation of pure relaxation into his arms and legs and turned the blood in him into lead that weighted him down, and then the moment was over, fading fast like the wave had dragged the whole ocean away with it.

Sam's hand was pressed over the angel's chest and Gadreel watched him in turn, and there was a silence between them during which Sam seemed to grow more anxious and the sentry simply could not find the words from him anymore.

"Thank you," he said instead of the million other things he wanted to communicate.  
"Thank you."

A relieved smile broke through the anxiety in Sam, and he nodded.  
"I don't know why," the hunter spoke with a crooked smile, "we keep saying 'thank you' for this because it makes no sense, but... you're welcome."


	19. Trial and Error

* * *

 

The image of the angel's body arching into Sam's touch seemed to be etched into his memory, and every time he dared examine it, a shiver ran through him and a wave of pleasure mixed with an aching pain that charged down his body right alongside it. The relief he felt when Gadreel readjusted against him and brought him close with one hand caught between their bodies was intense: it seemed the younger had for a brief moment forgotten he was there with an angel, and that in reality there was little chance that he'd be left unsated just because the other needed to recharge. A breathless chuckle escaped him as he leaned in for a rough kiss, hair standing up at the feel of the male's fist gripping him firmly and resuming a rhythm better controlled and more determined than the one it had brought him over the edge with the previous time around. His hips rocked into it without him holding the motion back at all; he knew that Gadreel would understand, that he would know to read it right now, even if his experience - his needs - still remained different from Sam's own. It wasn't impatience, it was pure, unadultered _need_ , something that he trusted the other with enough to let himself give into it; how they'd come to this point escaped Sam, but the result was that once again in the midst of a situation he had no reason to smile in, he couldn't feel much else than strong, deep happiness and contentness the way he was. There was an aura about Gadreel that made him feel so much safer, like things would have to figure themselves out somehow and that he was protected, and forgetting reality was much easier than it would have been for him with anyone else.  
He tensed, whined and clawed Gadreel's back and shoulder at the feel of the male's teeth nipping at his neck, body feeling as if it was burning; his leg lifted, bent around Gadreel's body to keep him right where he was so that he'd never leave and a low, warm sound left the older's lips against Sam's skin at the feel of it. The nip was repeated, then turned into a series of long, near-aggressive kisses that rubbed the skin numb and charged the whole rest of Sam with a tingling sensation like sparks falling upon him but not quite burning, only prickling, and he seemed to have forgotten entirely how breathing worked, as he was gasping and moaning instead.

"Hold me down," he heard himself breathe between them, "Please."

If he'd expected a question, some kind of hesitation, he got none of it. Instead - faster than he'd prepared for - he felt Gadreel push him on his back, knees digging in on both sides of his legs to hold him down, and the weight of his free hand and arm pinned down Sam's wrists at level with his head. The feeling made him lose breath and he closed his eyes as if to expect a blow, but there wasn't any fear in him, just an excitement and a welcome tension filling the space inside his chest. He lifted his hips to press into the older's, whining and then finally inhaling again, the air between them full of their scent and the whole room feeling like the world's safest place to exist in.  
The feel of the other's hand massaging him returned at a faster pace, leaving Sam very little room to adjust into the new situation, and the combination of these factors made him dizzy in the best sense of the word. His whole body was trembling from strain and pleasure and he was trying hard to merge the whole of it with the male on top of him, but Gadreel was doing more than just _pretending_ to hold him down - he was going the whole mile, and he knew exactly how to do it.  
It was a strangely claustrophobic feeling, the sensation of bruises breaking into his held-down wrists and the rest of him existing under the control of this otherwordly being on top of him, only moving as much as Gadreel allowed him to and it wasn't much at all, but nothing - _nothing_ \- about it felt wrong or bad or scary. There was an odd sense of playfulness to it, like wrestling for the fun of it, with a sense of competition but none of training, none of the seriousness. It lingered in the air like an aura and through it all Sam could feel how aware Gadreel was of him, how keenly his each reaction was being tracked and acknowledged, and perhaps that was the very reason why he felt so secure. His comfort had to please Gadreel as he could have turned it up a notch still to cause real pain or truly appear threatening: Sam knew well that he could. Yet he kept it at that exact line between comfort and discomfort, never stepping across, never pushing it more than Sam invited him to do with pointless struggle, and the younger found it curious how accurately Gadreel could read him; the angel had to have very little understanding of exactly why he wanted this - hell, Sam himself hadn't yet figured out - but he adjusted into it and provided the best he could, and right there and then it felt as if his best was perfect at first stroke.

The nipping turned into biting, and a part of Sam was vaguely aware his neck was bruising much worse than his constrained wrists were - that he was being marked down with the exactly fitting, glaring signs of the slightly desperate, kinky little slut that he felt he'd unexpectedly turned into, and the thought made him let out a hoarse, breathless laughter. If he'd had a hand free, he would have brought it up to Gadreel's neck, but instead he cast a thankful look directly into the green that was staring back at him with an unearthly sharpness and concentration.  
"You're so, so damn good, Gadreel."  
The last thing he expected to get for the comment was a nip at his earlobe - he couldn't remember teaching that to the other but it seemed he was learning faster than Sam had credited him for. As something of a thank-you for it Sam choked on his breath and whimpered, hips slamming againt the older's with enough force to leave the points of contact aching - he couldn't remember getting this into anything in years, not since... not since hell, and somehow even recalling that memory felt as if he was recalling a scene from someone else's life, somewhere where it could not harm him, as if it was truly past and not a part of his present. To date, this was the first thing that separated him from the trauma and made him feel whole again: for just this moment, he was no longer a collection of shredded parts stitched together with nothing but good intentions and the force of sheer inability of letting go. He was a _person_ , and he was loved by another; even in the roughness of the angel's touches there was not a doubt about it. He loved Sam, and Sam welcomed the knowledge even as his thoughts dimmed to a sudden black and a mess of blissful, momentary oblivion that it stretched into.

 

* * *

 

Sam's legs were shaky and weak when they stumbled out of the bedroom and through a lazy but short shower, and still as they headed down to the kitchen for the younger to have a snack and for Gadreel to resume reading - he'd reminded Sam that he wasn't supposed to join in, and Sam was decisive to at least attempt to follow that plan.  
Instead he drank his coffee and tried to wrap his mind around the fact that the time was barely nearing three in the afternoon: in the bunker it was next to impossible to judge the flow of time accurately and he based most of his observations on it upon his routine, and his routine definitely did not involve throughout, long and passionate sex at noon. It was perhaps for that reason or simply because making love had relaxed him so deeply he could feel his bones bending to rest that he was continuously yawning and felt it was hard for him to grasp any of the strains of thought that flashed across his mind and then, swiftly, away from his reach again. He felt lethargic, fluid like water out of a knocked-over glass, dripping slowly but inevitably off the table and onto the ground. Half-annoyed, half throughoutly satisfied he rubbed at his eyes and shook his head trying to get the euphoria to lift.

"I brought the Blade to the safe place while you were down there," he uttered in a half-conscious state.

Gadreel nodded.

"I mean, there's a chance he'll find it if he has some superhuman connection to it, but it's buried in the safest box I could find and the Men of Letters safe boxes are pretty safe, so I'm not really worried. I was thinking I should plant some potatoes around it, though. We have a whole botany and we haven't even thought about using it."

"Potatoes?"

"And herbs. If we had someone here twenty-four hours a day, we could actually grow things that we need for spells, the really difficult to get kind of stuff, but that same stuff needs a lot of attention, so I guess that's a dream for later."

Gadreel nodded again.

"So yeah," Sam continued, absently checking his mail to find it empty of new messages and then promptly burying the cellphone back inside his pocket, "potatoes. Salad. Carrots. I don't know. Easy, fresh food."

"That sounds like a good idea."

It was Sam's turn to nod.  
"Yeah."  
He smiled into his water and then bit into the slice of bread with store-bought salad and tomatoes that had most likely prompted the train of thought in the first place.  
"Yeah, I think it is. Hey, there's - uh - a thing I want to talk about."

"I am listening."

Sam's look turned reserved and the smile on him uncertain, almost as if he already regretted bringing up the subject.  
"I didn't cross any lines today, did I?" he asked cautiously but with light warmth lingering in his voice from before.

Gadreel thought for a moment and then shook his head.  
"No," he finally said, "You listen to me well, even when I do not have the words."

Sam nodded again.  
"Well, I'm glad. I'm just not sure if that's something you, you know, _want_."  
A brief silence followed: as it lasted, Sam tried to finish his bread but failed, barely managing more than to nip at it and drag off a salad leaf that fell heavy over his chin, staining it with butter. A heavy sigh left him as he brushed the stain off.  
"If - uh - I'm something that you _can_ want."

"What do you mean?"

The hunter shrugged, unable to look anywhere near Gadreel and instead choosing to stare at his bread.  
"I mean, it's kind of obvious that you don't - you don't have that need like I do. I just want to make sure that it's not because you don't want - God, we already had this conversation, it should be enough once. I just - I hope you don't sleep with me because you feel it's something that I expect of you."

"No. I do it because I want to."

"Really?"

"Really."  
Gadreel's look was examining as he watched Sam squirm in his seat, and Sam would have loved to give him the answers he was looking for, but for once it was him who was out of words. Perhaps a part of him feared that if he'd ask, he'd hear what he feared, yet none of the replies the angel had given him so far had played into that assumption. The hunter drew in a long breath and tried to calm himself down - the issue, if there was one, would not vanish if he didn't address it, and he would have rather had his answers now than when it hurt even more than it would now. It was ridiculous how certain and confident he felt at times, and then, with nothing more than a solitary thought in the other direction it all crashed down on him like this.

"But you're not - you're not _attracted_ to me the way I'm - the way I'm attracted to you," he finally breathed out, wincing at his own words, "You don't want me that way; it's always - I'm always the one who pushes you into it."

The older hesitated, and Sam prayed to all heavens that they were still speaking the same language. Then, after almost half a minute had passed, Gadreel finally looked away defeatedly, the motion slow and unwilling.  
"Does that take away from what I feel? Does that - make it less?" the angel asked from the corner of the table.

"What?"

Their eyes met and Sam felt like his chest was hollow and that whatever had been inside was now freefalling somewhere far beneath the floor of the room.

"Perhaps I lack desire; perhaps I cannot experience it the way you'd want me to. But what I feel and what I experience are still things that I - they are no less real."  
There was frustration underneath the initial tone of hurt in Gadreel's voice, and Sam realised it was because they were not speaking the same language anymore. He wasn't sure if it would have helped to switch into Enochian - whether the language native to Gadreel would have had the words that he was looking for.

"What _do_ you feel, then?" Sam asked him, hoping the tone of his voice wasn't too sharp.

"I wish I could tell you," Gadreel replied dejectedly, "I wish I could show you. But I cannot; I don't have the words or the means. Earlier, you gave me those. I explained the way I felt and you offered a word for that feeling. You told me what I was describing was love, and you were right; it is different to what I've felt before, but it is the same feeling. I love you, and I wish that was enough, and that what I can give you would make you feel wanted in the way that you need to feel it. I do want, I'm certain of it now; I want the closeness that we share in all the forms that we've shared it, even when it happens in a way that crosses from what I can experience to what is unique to you alone. That does not mean that I do not enjoy it or that I do not feel it, only that I cannot need it the way you do. I need other things that are sated by the same acts, but if what you expect of me is sexual desire, I'm afraid it is something that I cannot feel - that it is an experience which I am not equipped with."

"It's... not about me at all, is it?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Sorry."  
Sam bit into the half a slice of bread he'd held for the longest while and tried to stop hurting; if he'd wanted the euphoria gone a moment ago, now he just wanted it back. Still it seemed relieving to get this out of the way - even if the answers he got were not the ones he'd wanted, and he didn't even know what those were, at least they were answers and having any at all made him at least aware of where he stood. Then, to his own surprise as well as Gadreel's, he smiled as he leaned back in the chair and looked the older in the eye.  
"Bottom line; you still like it? Sleeping with me, the whole rest of it?"

"I do."

"And - God, convince me. You're enough for me, Gadreel, I just - I want to know what you feel and how you feel it and basically... if I'm _good_ for you. I'm always afraid that because I don't know, I'll end up hurting you. That's not what I want, and it's so damn easy for me to get carried away because - because sometimes I really forget that you're not like me."

Gadreel smiled as well, even if he now seemed the insecure one.

"You _are_ good for me."  
He hesitated, and Sam let him look for the right words; his appetite was slowly returning to him and he finished what little had remained of the bread.  
"You wish me to communicate that. You - want me to tell you. I thought I understood that, but I always wait for you to ask first."

Sam nodded.  
"Yeah. I'm scared that one day I won't ask when I really need to and you won't let me know and I'll hurt you."

"I will try harder."  
Gadreel's eyes had regained the spark in them that Sam realised he was beginning to expect to see in them. It was a drastic change to the way he'd been just two weeks earlier when that spark had never once visited the green that now seemed so alive.  
"It will take a while, but I will try to learn."

"It's gotta be hard," Sam admitted, "I mean, you've - probably had it beaten into you to never say what you feel about anything, that your opinion either isn't valued or it's downright dangerous to show. And before that, I mean, you are an angel, and... it wasn't your place to have an opinion."

"I thought I was broken when I struggled with orders. I thought no one else did. I suppose that was why I trusted Lucifer so unconditionally; he was like me, and I was relieved to hear I wasn't the only one who doubted. Now I look around and I realise it was never that way. We all thought for ourselves. We just never acted upon it. Perhaps it was for the best, but in this world - there is no alternative."

"There really isn't. I wish I could give you a place where you'd feel secure but that's a long way from here, isn't it," Sam grimaced.

"You've done much," Gadreel replied with a smile, "I feel valued and safe here. It is a start, and more than I've ever had. The rest is up to me - I know I can trust you. Now I just have to learn to live with that."

"You say it like it's a bad thing," the younger chuckled, reaching his hand across the table and over the book still open between them, and Gadreel's fingers joined with his without hesitation.

"It is a blessing, yet I have not had many for a long time. Moreover, I fear I am not at all adapted to my freedom either - even less the choice I have, the possibilities that are suddenly open for me. It is a lot to take in, and I am not quick to adjust."

Sam nodded, holding the other's hand tighter. Relief had now replaced the hurt in him and the only thing he hoped was that the words would make a difference for the both of them - that Gadreel would learn to tell him what he felt, and that he'd learn to trust what he knew with a side of patience for the rest of it.  
"That sounds scary when you put it like that."

"It is. But I am fine. For the first time in a very long time, I'm fine. And it helps to have work to do."

"Yeah," Sam huffed, "It's not like you get to enjoy full freedom anytime soon. Not as long as you stick to this team, anyway."

"I intend to for a very long while, Sam."

"Yeah."  
Sam pressed his knuckles over the persistent smile on his lips, thinking.  
"Yeah. About that."

 

* * *

 

Dean raised his eyes towards Sam and mapped the purple, red and blue bruises on his neck, sighing deep before giving Gadreel a long apprehensive stare.  
"You could have tried to cover that up, Sam," the older brother grunted, gaze now turning to the syringe of blood held by him, "Seriously. Christ. Way, way too much information."

"I'm going to ignore the rest and just concentrate on you saying 'Christ' without looking like you're choking on a lemon," Sam replied calmly, although he did pull the collar of his shirt up with a hint of discomfort and embarrasment in the motion.

"Is that even pure? I mean, you probably went through the usual hurdle to cleanse your soul and confess your sins and whatever but, man, bottoming for Lucifer's best buddy just kind of seems like something that won't be forgiven with two Ave Marias and the sign of the cross."

"I think we'll be alright."  
Sam's voice was still neutral, and Gadreel barely shifted in discomfort to the notion. The younger brother brought the needle to Dean's neck and pressed it in swiftly, emptied it and pulled it out to find a single drop returning to the surface of the puncture would. He swiped it off with a paper towel, pressed for a second and then discarded the needle in exchange for picking up the key from his pocket.  
"Promise to behave?"

"Oh. _Oh_."  
Dean shifted, raising his wrists that were still in chains although the one around his neck had been removed earlier.  
"Yeah. I'm the poster child for good behaviour."

"Thought you might say that."

The click of the lock was accompanied by a long, drawn-out sigh of relief from the almost cured Knight.  
"Where's Cas?" the demon asked, stretching his wrists and rubbing at the bruises that he'd grinded into them with the chains.

"We don't know," Sam admitted before falling into the free chair in an exhausted manner, "He went off and I haven't been able to contact him since. I made him promise he'd come back if he can't fix it - it's about the stolen grace. But I really, really don't know."

"Should we summon him or whatever?"

"Wouldn't do us much good," Sam replied with a grimace, sliding further down in his seat, "even if the spell did work, he'd have to drive to us and if he's actually getting somewhere, that'd be pointless."

"Oh, yeah, the whole - the whole Heaven thing. It's still not fixed, then."

"No. It's still not fixed. And - you remember the thing about spirits being trapped? Well, there's a surge in hauntings. It's keeping everyone busy, so all the other kinds of monsters are sensing opportunity and - God, it's a mess, Dean. So if you can get back on the road - we have work to do."

Dean's eyes flitted towards Gadreel.  
"Aren't you just dandy with your new boyfriend?" he asked, turning a mocking stare at Sam, who simply stared back at him with a frustrated expression.

"Can you get over yourself, Dean? Just for a moment."

"Oh, yeah, it's about me. I'm the one with an attitude problem, I get it."

"Seriously."

"No, man, I'm serious. I'm not working with that traitor."

"Says the demon."

"Says the demon, Sam. I'm still your brother too, if you need reminding."

The younger laughed hollowly.  
"Yeah, I recall that. You're just not really acting the part. Look, I don't give a crap what you think of Gadreel, we have bigger problems than that. We can trust him, and I'm standing by that - I'll back him on it. If he betrays us, that's not on you. I'm certain he won't. You trusted my life on him and I'd do the same now. Either you work with him or you don't work at all, Dean. It's as simple as that."

"Oh, so now you're calling the shots."

"As long as you can't, yeah. I'm calling the shots. You wanted tyranny, well, have fun on the other end of it. Your reign's over."

Dean rolled his eyes and sighed. Then, slowly, his attitude changed and with another sigh - this one a longer, more defeated sort - he shrugged.  
"So what's the job? We can't gank ghosts if they don't have anywhere to go."

"No. Hunting uglies happens on the side - the Mark is our first priority."

"The Mark of Cain? Really? _This_ thing?"  
Dean's finger ran down his arm, the scarring over the brand showing as a bump in the otherwise flat surface underneath the sleeve of his shirt. Sam nodded.

"That thing, yeah," he replied calmly and confidently.

"Uh - okay. Sounds ambitious. It can't be removed."

"We'll find a way."  
Sam reached across the table and gripped the older's hand. For a while he was the only one holding the contact, but then, finally, Dean's grip turned firm as well and he nodded.  
"And if you can just - if you'll even  _try_ \- I know I can trust you."

"Didn't you learn a thing about trusting demons?" Dean huffed, but his eyes had a spark to them and, unnoticed by him, his hand lifted to press over the bruise on his neck that the injections had left behind.

Sam merely smiled crookedly; he'd made up his mind.

"Okay," Dean finally said when no one seemed to be second-guessing the deal.  
"Okay."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End. Probably.


End file.
